DNA storage': How can data be preserved for thousands of years?

Dina Zielinski, senior human genome scientist at France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research, held up a small vial to the camera while speaking to us on a video call from her home in Paris.

It was difficult to identify the object inside the vial, but he said that if I look closely at the object, I will see a clear and thin film at the bottom of the vial, which is 'DNA'.

But this DNA is special. It is not the code of a human genome, nor the code of an animal or virus. Instead, it's a digital artifact of a museum.

"It could easily last for hundreds of years," says Dina.

In the past decade, there has been significant research into sequencing the human genome, preparing DNA and exploring genetic therapies, as well as storing data within DNA.

Scientists have encoded movies, books and even computer operating systems within DNA. Netflix has even used it to store an episode of its 2020 thriller series 'Biohackers'.

The information stored in DNA is what makes humans human, and this is the case in other species as well. But many experts say it's a very small, durable and long-term way to store data that could replace many of the unreliable digital storage mediums we currently have, as they can regularly deteriorate and require storage. It requires a lot of energy.

Meanwhile, many experts are researching whether we can effectively secure data forever. One way to do this is to inscribe the data on extremely strong glass beads, which would be a modern form of cave engraving.

But how long can this data really last and can we really store such a large amount of data in it?

At a time when our world is becoming more digitalized than ever, our dependence on data is increasing. Movies, photos, websites, business documents, critical security records, everything we use is digitized and we depend on it more than ever.

Most of the data we create is stored in the form of 0's and 1's on magnetic tapes like hard drives, but this is not an ideal method. First of all, demagnetization is a big problem.

Magnets lose their strength over time, so it's important to rewrite hard drives every few years to keep data safe. "On average, it can last 10 to 20 years, and if you're lucky and the conditions are favorable, it can last up to 50 years," Zylinski says.