New DNA “Cassette Tapes” With Petabyte Potential

A research team in Shenzhen has built a working “cassette tape” that stores files as synthetic DNA on a polyester‑nylon tape, with a theoretical capacity that could dwarf today’s magnetic cartridges.

Who Built It, And What Is It?

Scientists led by Professor Xingyu Jiang at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), with collaborators including Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, have designed a compact tape and an automated drive that writes, protects, indexes and retrieves DNA‑encoded files. Their peer‑reviewed paper in Science Advances describes a barcoded membrane tape with hundreds of thousands of addressable partitions, an on‑tape chemical process to encapsulate DNA for long life, and a drive that handles file addressing, recovery and redeposition.