Microsoft Technology Licensing Assigned Two Patents

High-density DNA storage with salt
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,793,852) developed by Strauss, Karin, Seattle, WA, Chen, Weida, Grass, Robert, Kohll, Alexander Xavier Christof, Zurich, Switzerland, and Nguyen, Bichlien Hoang, Seattle, WA, for a “high-density DNA storage with salt.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A data storage medium is disclosed comprising a dried product formed by drying a salt solution dried together with artificially synthesized DNA molecules encoding digital information. The cation in the salt may be calcium, magnesium, lanthanum, or another cation. The anion in the salt may be chloride, phosphate, or another anion. The DNA is protected from degradation by drying with the salt. Stored DNA may be freed from the salt for sequencing or other analysis by mixing the dried product with a chelator. The dry product formed from DNA and a salt may contain more than 30% DNA by weight and degrade at rates that are less than a third of rate at which untreated DNA degrades.”

The patent application was filed on June 25, 2018 (16/017,714).

Primer and payload design for retrieval of stored polynucleotides
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA, has been assigned a patent (10,793,897) developed by Chen, Yuan-Jyue, Ceze, Luis H., Seattle, WA, Yekhanin, Sergey, Redmond, WA, Ang, Siena Dumas, Seattle, WA, and Strauss, Karin, Seattle, WA, for “primer and payload design for retrieval of stored polynucleotides.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”This disclosure describes techniques to improve the accuracy of random access of data stored in polynucleotide sequence data storage systems. Primers used in polynucleotide sequence replication and amplification can be scored against a number of criteria that indicate the fitness of sequences of nucleotides to function as primers. Primers having scores that indicate a particular fitness to function as primers can be added to a specific group of primers. The primers from the group of primers can be used in amplification and replication of polynucleotide sequences that encode digital data. Additionally, an amount of overlap between primer targets and payloads encoding digital data can be determined. Minimizing the amount of overlap between primer targets and payloads can improve the efficiency of polynucleotide replication and amplification. The bits of the digital data can be randomized to minimize the amount of overlap between payloads encoding the digital data and primer targets.”

The patent application was filed on February 8, 2017 (15/427,344).