Digital information storage in DNA
Dr. Paul Bertone,
European Bioinformatics Institute, UK –
Abstract:
The amount of information that humans produce and want to store is increasing exponentially. It is estimated that the total digital information on Earth is of the order of zettabytes (thousands of billions of billions of bytes). The amount of digital information that people want to archive, i.e. store safely, recoverably, for long periods of time with only rare access and with minimal ongoing maintenance requirements, is also growing. However, at present essentially no long-term archiving of digital information is taking place. This is because all current digital storage media require a continual cycle of maintenance to renew both the storage medium and the ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ hardware. This in turn is because there is no conventional computing storage technology that is trusted to survive more than a few years.
Recent genome science-inspired advances in the technologies for reading and writing DNA led us to investigate possibility of using DNA as a digital archive medium. DNA is a stable information carrier, with 10,000-year-old intact sequences routinely recovered from historical samples. Safe DNA storage conditions are easily maintained at low cost, and the ability to read DNA fragments will surely survive for as long as there are technologically-advanced humans inquisitive about the working of living systems. In our proof-of-concept experiment, we showed how existing DNA technologies can be used to store and recover digital information in a manner that could be extrapolated to global data scales, incorporating modern methods such as error correcting codes for data integrity. This talk will describe this experiment, and will speculate on the future of DNA as a digital storage medium.
This talk is a keynote address in the scope of the conferences iPRES-2013/DC-2013 The conferences require registration but this talk will be open to free audience.
Bio
PhD Yale University, 2005. At EMBL-EBI since 2005. Joint appointments in Genome Biology and Developmental Biology Units. Associate Investigator, Wellcome Trust – Medical Research Council Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge
Host
José Luis Brinquete Borbinha
Venue:
Congress Center
Upcoming Events
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The European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is a repository for all sequence and genotype experiment types, including case-control, population, and family studies. The EGA will serve as a permanent archive that will archive several levels of data, including the raw data (which could, for example, be re-analysed in the future by other algorithms) as well as the genotype calls provided by the submitters.
Responding to national regulations over human data sharing and other constraints, BioData.pt deploys and operates a Local EGA instance and tools that allow data discovery of genomic and phenoclinic data, following the GA4GH standard and international best practices.
This workshop aims at informing the human research community of the status and availability of BioData.pt Local EGA and discuss from several perspectives its need and usability challenges.
Further details and registration are available here.
OLISSIPO Summer School in Lisbon | Computational phylogenetics to analyse the evolution of cells and communities

We are happy to announce the OLISSIPO Summer School on Computational phylogenetics to analyse the evolution of cells and communities, which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, at INESC-ID, between July 2-7, 2023.
Keynote speakers:
David Posada, University of Vigo (class)
João Alves, University of Vigo (hands-on)
Nadia El-Mabrouk, Université de Montréal (class)
Mattéo Delabre, Université de Montréal (hands-on)
Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Claremont McKenna College (class and hands-on)
Russell Schwartz, Carnegie Mellon University (class and hands-on)
See the preliminary agenda at: https://olissipo.inesc-id.pt/tree-tango-school
Registration is mandatory. You can register at: https://forms.gle/VsASFHW5E7MJvaCc9
The registration fee is 250€ for students and OLISSIPO members and 350€ for postdocs or other researchers (meals indicated at the schedule of the school are included, accommodation and flights are not). All details will be made available upon registration.
We will have slots for flash talks (3-10 min depending on the number of submissions) to present yourself and the work you have been developing in your research.
The 13th Lisbon Machine Learning School | LxMLS 2023

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Check online for information about past editions: LxMLS 2011, LxMLS 2012, LxMLS 2013, LxMLS 2014, LxMLS 2015, LxMLS 2016, LxMLS 2017, LxMLS 2018, LxMLS 2019, LxMLS 2020, LxMLS 2021, LxMLS 2022 (you can also watch the videos of the lectures for 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020).
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The ISD 2023 conference held this year also provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to promote their research, practical experience, and to discuss issues related to Information Systems through papers, posters, and journal-first paper presentations.
ISD 2023 will be hosted by Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon, Portugal, on August 30–September 1, 2023.