Could all your digital photos be stored as DNA?

Jun 16, 2021

According to Mark Bathe, an MIT professor of biological engineering, a coffee mug full of DNA could theoretically store all of the world’s data. Image: Unsplash/Markus Spiske

Anne Trafton

Guest contributor, MIT News

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Data Science is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Data Science

Have you read?

A photo of the DNA “files.” Each silica sphere contains DNA sequences that encode a particular image, and the outside of the sphere is coated with nucleotide barcodes that describe the image contents.

A photo of the DNA 'files.' Each silica sphere contains DNA sequences that encode a particular image. Image: Courtesy of the researchers

Discover

What is the World Economic Forum doing about the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.