{"id":2014709,"date":"2025-09-11T17:47:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2014709"},"modified":"2025-09-11T17:47:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:47:27","slug":"dna-cassette-tape-can-store-every-song-ever-recorded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/dna-cassette-tape-can-store-every-song-ever-recorded\/","title":{"rendered":"DNA cassette tape can store every song ever recorded"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The DNA cassette resembles music cassette tapes<\/p>\n

Jiankai Li et al. 2025<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Retro cassette tapes may be making a comeback, with a DNA twist. While DNA has been used as an information storage medium before, researchers have now combined this with the convenience and look of a 1980s cassette tape, creating what they are calling a DNA cassette.<\/p>\n

Xingyu Jiang<\/a> at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Guangdong, China, and his colleagues created the cassette by printing synthetic DNA molecules on to a plastic tape. \u201cWe can design its sequence so that the order of the DNA bases (A, T, C, G) represents digital information, just like 0s and 1s in a computer,\u201d he says. This means it can store any type of digital file, whether text, image, audio or video.<\/p>\n

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One problem with previous DNA storage techniques is the difficulty in accessing data<\/a>, so the team then overlaid a series of barcodes on the tape to assist with retrieval. \u201cThis process is like finding a book in the library,\u201d says Jiang. \u201cWe first need to find the shelf corresponding to the book, then find the book on the corresponding shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tape is also coated in what the researchers describe as \u201ccrystal armour\u201d made of zeolitic imidazolate, which prevents the DNA bonds from breaking down. That means the cassette could store data for centuries without deteriorating.<\/p>\n

While a traditional cassette tape could boast around 12 songs on each side, 100 metres of the new DNA cassette tape can hold more than 3 billion pieces of music, at 10 megabytes a song. The total data storage capacity is 36 petabytes of data \u2013 equivalent to 36,000 terabyte hard drives.<\/p>\n

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However, says team member Jiankai Li<\/a>, also at the Southern University of Science and Technology, if you put one of the new tapes into an old-fashioned Walkman, it won\u2019t produce any meaningful sound, because the DNA cassette doesn\u2019t use the magnetic signals of its predecessor.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur tape carries DNA molecules,\u201d says Li. \u201cIn other words, it would be like trying to play a photo in a record player \u2014 the formats are incompatible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newscientist.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DNA cassette resembles music cassette tapes Jiankai Li et al. 2025 Retro cassette tapes may be making a comeback, with a DNA twist. While DNA has been used as an information storage medium before, researchers have now combined this with the convenience and look of a 1980s cassette tape, creating what they are calling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2014710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[36051,369214],"class_list":["post-2014709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-data","tag-dna"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/DNA-cassette-tape-can-store-every-song-ever-recorded.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2014709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2014710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2014709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2014709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2014709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}