Two historical texts kept at the National Archives of France, including the Declaration of Human Rights, have been encoded on DNA, thanks to a new technology which promises a more durable and less voluminous storage than the traditional digital one.
These are two tiny capsules containing synthetic DNA strands, on which were stored the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Citizen, written in 1791 by Olympe de Gouges, considered one of the pioneers of French feminism.
“This is the first time that the Archives of France keep documents on DNA and it is a world first for a public institution”, welcomed Tuesday Bruno Ricard, Director General of the National Archives.
The capsules were deposited on Tuesday in the iron cabinet of the National Archives in Paris, alongside the originals and other emblematic texts such as the 1958 Constitution or Napoleon’s will.
The technology consists of transforming binary digital data (the document on paper encoded in a file made up of 0 and 1), into quaternary data: the letters A, T, C and G. These letters are the building blocks of DNA, the support of genetic information which is transmitted from generation to generation, over several tens of thousands of years.
The digital information thus converted is stored on large molecules – like living things – copied billions of times: “it is an innovative bioinspired strategy”, explains Stéphane Lemaire, of the National Center for Scientific Research, whose team behind the project ” DNA Drive “.
The rewritten DNA is then freeze-dried and to read the information, just add a drop of water. We can then recover the file via a DNA sequencer.
Stability is guaranteed for “more than 50,000 years,” says Stéphane Lemaire, recalling that a complete genome of a mammoth over a million years old had been able to be reconstructed. Digital magnetic tape storage, on the other hand, has a short lifespan – data must be transferred every ten years.
The technology is also “energy efficient” and incomparably less bulky than ” datasphere », Which brings together all the world’s digital data.
These, estimated at 45 zettabytes, are growing exponentially, and “the demand is already greater than the storage supply”, underlines Stéphane Lemaire.
DNA potentially offers “a density so high that we could store all the data in the world in the equivalent of a bar of chocolate,” he says.
But the technology is still limited by its very high cost – around 900 euros per megabyte.