As the amount of digital information in the world increases exponentially and current data storage formats deplete the Earth of memory-grade raw materials, DNA has increasingly become a contender as a viable solution for offline digital data storage. Marketed as a cleaner, denser, and longer lasting format, DNA will usher biotechnology and bioethics into the field of data storage and by proxy digital preservation. Memory institutions must confront the implications this new format will have on our relationships to the living world, to our collections, and to our data. Moreover, as DNA-based data storage companies and consortia see archival storage as the format’s first use case, archivists are uniquely positioned to imbue archival standards, ethics, and sensibilities into this new format before its standardization. This thesis explores the technical specifications of DNA-based data storage, describes the necessary advances for DNA to become an appropriate and appealing preservation format, and surveys the field to identify areas where archival knowledge could be crucial to the development of this new format. This thesis also grapples with the ways in which DNA’s perpetuation as ‘the code of life’ in the wake of the Human Genome Project and in the public imaginary affects institutional preservation strategies and reveals underlying ideologies at work in the archive. The final chapter’s case study of the Australian National Film and Sound Archive’s DNA-based data storage pilot project dissects the slippage of material quality with metaphoric language at play. DNA makes readily apparent that the archive is not a metaphor, that its technological materialities must be taken seriously in order to contend with the racial and colonial projects that have reappeared as genomics and cultural heritage institutions collide at the site of data storage.