""DNA can store digital information in a space that is orders of magnitude smaller than datacenters use today.""
Would this DNA also exist in the same conditions as the data center or does it need more things?
To put it into context, each cell in your body contains 6 billion base pairs of data (two copies of your genome). Each base is one of 4 bits, so that’s 4^6000000000 of data in each cell. Your body has ~37 trillion cells [1]. A person is about the size of a rack (well, maybe 10-15U by volume), so that’s 3.7e13 * 4^6e9 bits per rack.
A petabyte is 8e15 bits.
That’s a lot of data storage capacity in a small space. Moreover, there is the potential for introducing more synthetic bases to increase the 4 to 6.
With 6 gigabases per cell and 2bits per base, the storage capacity is 12 gigabits (1.5 gigabytes) per cell. And with 37 trillion cells (3.72e13) in a human body, that’s 3.72e13 cells * 1.5e9 bytes per cell which is 5.58e22 bytes per person or 55 zettabytes. This seems like a more reasonable number.
Of course even when you said base you did the math with # of base pairs, so it doesn't really matter.
T-A
A-T
G-C
C-G
That location, using 2 base's, encodes 4 possible values, i.e. 2 bits. I.e. 1 bit per base.
But that doesn't explain storage density. And biological DNA has mechanisms to survive in a cell but these synthetic DNA's might be standalone.