Scientists In China Create DNA Cassette Tape With Capacity Of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent To Seven Billion Songs And Millions Of Cell Phones In One Device

Written by Débora Araújo

Published on 17/09/2025 at 12:32

Cientistas na China criam fita cassete feita de DNA com capacidade de 36 petabytes — equivalente a sete bilhões de músicas e milhões de celulares em um só dispositivo

Be the first to react!

Researchers in Shenzhen Create Revolutionary Cassette That Uses DNA Instead of Magnetic Tape, With Capacity of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent to Seven Billion Songs, But Still at Prohibitive Cost.

The traditional cassette tape, launched in 1962, marked generations in the 1970s and 1980s. It allowed users to record music, create homemade compilations, and listen to songs on portable devices like the Walkman. However, it also had technical issues: the tape would get stuck in the recorder, lose sound quality, and sometimes required a pen to rewind it. With the advancement of CDs, MP3s, and streaming, the tape became a nostalgic object, a reminder of an analog era. Now, however, scientists in China propose a surprising leap: the DNA-based cassette.

The Chinese Revolution: DNA as a Storage Medium

Researchers in Shenzhen have developed a technology that replaces magnetic tape with synthetic DNA as a recording medium. The new cassette does not store minutes of audio, but rather petabytes of data. Its capacity reaches 36 petabytes, equivalent to seven billion songs — a collection impossible to fit into any conventional digital device.

Unlike digital media, which records data in zeros and ones, the DNA cassette uses the four nitrogenous bases of the genetic code:

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

The Amazing Density of DNA

To understand the potential, simply look to nature:

The DNA of a human cell can store about 1.5 gigabytes of data, equivalent to two CDs of music.
One gram of DNA has a capacity of up to 450 exabytes, which would correspond to 1.8 billion modern smartphones.

This density explains why DNA is seen as the ultimate medium for the future of data storage.

Advantages Over Current Media

While hard disks, SSDs, and even the cloud have limits on scale and durability, DNA offers:

High Durability: Information can be preserved for centuries without loss.
Extreme Miniaturization: Enormous libraries could fit in a small capsule of DNA.
Biological Security: The material is stable and replicable.

In practice, it would be possible to store the entire catalog of movies, music, and documents on the planet in just a few grams of DNA.

It Cooks, Carries Boxes, and Can Steal Millions of Jobs: Humanoid Robot from China Challenges Tesla and Promises to Change the World as We Know It

The Price Is Still the Obstacle

Despite the advancement, the technology will not reach the public anytime soon. The process of synthesizing and reading DNA is still extremely expensive and slow. The study itself acknowledges that at this moment, the DNA cassette is merely an experimental prototype.

But there are historical parallels. Just as happened with conventional cassette tapes — which were initially expensive and later became popular — the same could occur with DNA.
Experts believe that with increasing demand and the evolution of laboratory techniques, costs will drop rapidly.

Nostalgia with Innovation

The choice to name the project “cassette tape” is not accidental. The scientists aimed to associate the nostalgia of the 1980s with a futuristic view of technology. It’s as if the tape, once a symbol of portable music, returns in 2025 to hold the digital memory of humanity.

If it ever reaches the market, the DNA cassette could be used for:

Long-term Archives, such as historical and scientific records;
Green Data Centers, with less environmental impact than traditional data centers;
Cultural Preservation, ensuring that music, films, and digital works do not get lost.

Until then, the technology will still be confined to laboratories and academic research. But the mere fact of transforming the code of life into information media shows that the future of storage is just beginning.

0 Comments

most recent

older Most voted

Scientists In China Create DNA Cassette Tape With Capacity Of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent To Seven Billion Songs And Millions Of Cell Phones In One Device

Researchers in Shenzhen Create Revolutionary Cassette That Uses DNA Instead of Magnetic Tape, With Capacity of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent to Seven Billion Songs, But Still at Prohibitive Cost.

The Chinese Revolution: DNA as a Storage Medium

The Amazing Density of DNA

Advantages Over Current Media

The Price Is Still the Obstacle

Nostalgia with Innovation

Engineers want to carve through Africa with a giant canal to bring water from the world’s second-largest river to a dying lake on the edge of the Sahara Desert that has already lost 90% of its water.

A giant brown band visible from space, approximately 8,850 kilometers long, connected Africa to America in the Atlantic Ocean, and satellites revealed that it is neither land nor pollution, but the largest accumulation of seaweed in the world, which broke records in 2025.

Instead of burning or burying old tires, an American city is transforming about 2,000 of them into the street itself, paving its first sections with a quieter and more durable rubber asphalt.

In just one cast, fishermen are surprised to capture 14,096 mullets in Bombinhas and close a historic season with 58,000 fish; scene recorded in the Santa Catarina paradise marks the last day of the 2026 season.

Using high-resolution satellite images, archaeologists rediscovered the Egyptian city of Imet, buried for centuries in the Nile Delta, revealing rare multi-story houses, granaries, and a sacred road linked to the cobra goddess Wadjet, from about 2,400 years ago.

Greek island offers free housing for volunteers, but there’s a condition: you need to take care of rescued cats.

Motorcyclist sees excavator arriving at the edge of a river in Bosnia, calls neighbors in minutes and turns a hydroelectric project into a resistance lasting more than 10 years with five expired concessions.

A mother who worked as a recycler took money from her own food to put credit on her daughter’s broken-screen cell phone; now Débora has been accepted into medical school at two universities and wants to save hearts in the operating room.

The government opens the budget to pay pensions and ends up targeting precisely the FAB’s Gripen fighter jet; the reason for the R$ 800 million block reveals a fragility that has haunted the country’s defense projects for decades.

A property that once had more than 1,000 hectares now operates with 73 hectares and invests in coffee, cattle, photovoltaic energy, and hydroponic corn to prove that a small farm can also be profitable.

A potato-shaped object over a mountain and orbs multiplying in the sky are among the 72 new files from the Department of Defense that do not prove extraterrestrial life.

Family struggling with the electricity bill at the end of the month finds an air conditioner that consumes little and costs only R$ 21 per month; LG device cools the room 40% faster and also comes with a detail that grabs attention.

Scientists In China Create DNA Cassette Tape With Capacity Of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent To Seven Billion Songs And Millions Of Cell Phones In One Device

Researchers in Shenzhen Create Revolutionary Cassette That Uses DNA Instead of Magnetic Tape, With Capacity of 36 Petabytes — Equivalent to Seven Billion Songs, But Still at Prohibitive Cost.

The Chinese Revolution: DNA as a Storage Medium

The Amazing Density of DNA

Advantages Over Current Media

The Price Is Still the Obstacle

Nostalgia with Innovation

Engineers want to carve through Africa with a giant canal to bring water from the world’s second-largest river to a dying lake on the edge of the Sahara Desert that has already lost 90% of its water.

A giant brown band visible from space, approximately 8,850 kilometers long, connected Africa to America in the Atlantic Ocean, and satellites revealed that it is neither land nor pollution, but the largest accumulation of seaweed in the world, which broke records in 2025.

Instead of burning or burying old tires, an American city is transforming about 2,000 of them into the street itself, paving its first sections with a quieter and more durable rubber asphalt.

In just one cast, fishermen are surprised to capture 14,096 mullets in Bombinhas and close a historic season with 58,000 fish; scene recorded in the Santa Catarina paradise marks the last day of the 2026 season.

Using high-resolution satellite images, archaeologists rediscovered the Egyptian city of Imet, buried for centuries in the Nile Delta, revealing rare multi-story houses, granaries, and a sacred road linked to the cobra goddess Wadjet, from about 2,400 years ago.

Greek island offers free housing for volunteers, but there’s a condition: you need to take care of rescued cats.

Motorcyclist sees excavator arriving at the edge of a river in Bosnia, calls neighbors in minutes and turns a hydroelectric project into a resistance lasting more than 10 years with five expired concessions.

The government opens the budget to pay pensions and ends up targeting precisely the FAB’s Gripen fighter jet; the reason for the R$ 800 million block reveals a fragility that has haunted the country’s defense projects for decades.

A potato-shaped object over a mountain and orbs multiplying in the sky are among the 72 new files from the Department of Defense that do not prove extraterrestrial life.

Family struggling with the electricity bill at the end of the month finds an air conditioner that consumes little and costs only R$ 21 per month; LG device cools the room 40% faster and also comes with a detail that grabs attention.

A 2.4-meter drone created in Denmark could change sea rescues by locating castaways with more than 80% success, landing on ships in seconds, and delivering life vests before cold and exhaustion reduce survival chances.

Starlink stops selling antennas to consumers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and starts charging a monthly rental fee for the equipment in a new strategy for satellite internet.

A mother who worked as a recycler took money from her own food to put credit on her daughter’s broken-screen cell phone; now Débora has been accepted into medical school at two universities and wants to save hearts in the operating room.

The government opens the budget to pay pensions and ends up targeting precisely the FAB’s Gripen fighter jet; the reason for the R$ 800 million block reveals a fragility that has haunted the country’s defense projects for decades.

A property that once had more than 1,000 hectares now operates with 73 hectares and invests in coffee, cattle, photovoltaic energy, and hydroponic corn to prove that a small farm can also be profitable.

A potato-shaped object over a mountain and orbs multiplying in the sky are among the 72 new files from the Department of Defense that do not prove extraterrestrial life.

Family struggling with the electricity bill at the end of the month finds an air conditioner that consumes little and costs only R$ 21 per month; LG device cools the room 40% faster and also comes with a detail that grabs attention.