future generations might eventually find the stores and be able to read them." It is, however, a slow process, as the DNA needs to be sequenced in order to retrieve the data, and so the method is intended for uses with a low access rate such as long-term archival of large amounts of scientific data
The idea and the general considerations about the possibility of recording, storage and retrieval of information on DNA molecules were originally made by Mikhail Neiman and published in 1964–65 in the Radiotekhnika journal, USSR, and the technology may therefore be referred to as MNemONics, while the storage device may be known as MNeimON (Mikhail Neiman OligoNucleotides)
On August 16, 2012, the journal Science published research by George Church and colleagues at Harvard University, in which DNA was encoded with digital information that included an HTML draft of a 53,400 word book written by the lead researcher, eleven JPG images and one JavaScript program. Multiple copies for redundancy were added and 5.5 petabytes can be stored in each cubic millimeter of DNA