The DNA tape can store vastly more information than a standard cassette
Jiankai Li et al. 2025
In a new take on a technology from the 1960s, this year, researchers created a cassette tape that uses DNA instead of iron oxide to encode information on a plastic tape.
It can hold a phenomenal amount of information: while a traditional cassette tape stores around 12 songs on each side, the DNA tape can hold every song ever recorded.
At 10 megabytes a song, 100 metres of the DNA cassette tape can hold more than 3 billion pieces of music. The total data storage capacity is 36 petabytes of data – equivalent to 36,000 terabyte hard drives.
Xingyu Jiang at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Guangdong, China, and his colleagues created the cassette by printing synthetic DNA molecules onto a plastic tape. “We 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,” he told New Scientist in September. This means it can store any type of digital file, whether text, image, audio or video.
The team was overwhelmed by the response to its DNA cassette after it was reported by New Scientist. “One of the most unexpected outcomes was the wide range of reactions – not just from scientists, but from artists, engineers and educators,” says Jiang. “Many people wrote to us saying the work inspired them to think about data, biology and technology in new ways. That was incredibly rewarding.”
The next step for the researchers is developing a new head for the DNA cassette, similar in concept to the read-write head in a traditional magnetic tape drive. “In our system, this ‘head’ precisely positions and presses a selected section of the DNA tape into a small reaction chamber, where chemical or biochemical processes – such as releasing, reading or rewriting DNA – can take place,” says Jiang.
They hope to have the DNA cassette on the market within five years. “For us, the DNA cassette tape project was always about more than just storage capacity. It’s about reimagining how information can live in physical, even biological, forms,” says Jiang.
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