Artificial intelligence can read data stored in DNA strands within 10 minutes rather than the days required for previous methods, bringing DNA storage closer to practical use in computing.

That’s particularly true for encoding and decoding. “We really drive home the point that [decoding and encoding] are reciprocal, and they bootstrap each other,” Gillis said.

As a result, reading data stored in DNA can resemble reconstructing a book from a box filled with shredded, typo-ridden pages. “Traditional methods struggle with this chaos, requiring days of ...