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MPEG-G Standardization and DNA-Based Data Archiving
As genomic data reaches an estimated 40 exabytes globally in 2026, the informatics industry has been forced to adopt radical new storage and compression standards to avoid a "data collapse."
MPEG-G (ISO/IEC 23092): The industry has finally standardized on the MPEG-G format, which provides up to 100x more efficient compression than the old BAM or CRAM formats. This standard doesn't just compress data; it allows informatics tools to search and analyze the compressed file without needing to decompress it first, saving millions in cloud compute costs.
Smart Tiering & Archiving: AI-driven storage management now "tiers" data based on its clinical utility. Actionable clinical data is kept on high-speed SSDs ("Hot Storage"), while raw background reads are moved to specialized "Cold Storage" or experimental DNA-based data storage—where digital information is encoded back into synthetic DNA for long-term archiving that can last for centuries.