Microsoft researchers stored and retrieved "hello" message from DNA

Right now, the cost of creating synthetic DNA and then retrieving stored information from it is still too high for commercial use.

Microsoft researchers have been working with those from the University of Washington to develop the "first fully automated system to store and retrieve data in manufactured DNA," a process which has been described in a paper published by Nature Scientific Reports.

The experiment is simply a proof-of-concept test, but the research team was able to encode "hello" into bits of synthesised DNA and then convert it back into digital data using a "fully automated end-to-end system," the conversion of those five letters took 21 hours.