Kern Systems is developing a scalable DNA data storage infrastructure. The suggested types applications for their DNA data storage would include precious personal data, forensic data storage molecule for traceable quality control in food, textiles or pharmaceuticals, and big data.
Co-Founder and CEO Henry H. Lee has systems and synthetic biology expertise and developed the first demonstration of enzymatic DNA synthesis for data storage at Harvard Medical School. Co-Founder George M. Church is a Harvard/MIT professor who made foundational contributions to DNA sequencing and researches in the areas of synthetic biology and genome engineering.
Timeline
Terminator-free template-independent enzymatic DNA synthesis for digital information storage
Henry H. Lee, Reza Kalhor, Naveen Goela, Jean Bolot & George M. Church
Nature Communicationsvolume 10, Article number: 2383 (2019)
A kinetically controlled system is described that uses TdT to catalyze the linkage of naturally occurring nucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) to synthesize customized DNA strands with short homopolymeric extensions. Information is encoded in transitions between non-identical nucleotides, rather then in each nucleotide. A codec was devised and demonstrated to support accurate data retrieval from imperfectly synthesized strands and mathematically evaluate the parameters affecting the storage capacity of the system. DNA strands are synthesized that carry 144 bits.
People
George Church
Co-Founder
Henry Lee
Co-Founder
Further reading
Molecular digital data storage using DNA
Luis Ceze, Jeff Nivala, Karin Strauss
Web
May 8, 2019
Your future DNA hard drive will use enzymes
Kostas Vavitsas
Web
July 8, 2019
Documentaries, videos and podcasts
Companies
References
Kern Systems
CompanyCompany attributes
DNA synthesis
Brookline, Massachusetts
Y CombinatorCategories
Related Topics
Contributors
- 1
Meredith Hanel
Medical Genetics PhD, following life science applications that improve the health of humans and our planet. - 2
Henry Lee
Wet+soft+hard ware. - 3
Melanie Manipula
Researcher, writer and a former librarian - 4
Jed Christiansen
Special Projects & Business Development at Golden, Founder - Seed-DB. - 5
Will Suter
Student at the University of Notre Dame looking to expand my knowledge in topics that pique my interest.