DNA stores data in bits after epigenetic upgrade
DNA stores data in bits after epigenetic upgrade
dna has been The preferred data storage of humanity . Tough and compact, it is so information-tight that a gram of enough data for 10 million hours of high-resolution Video can save.
But there is always room for improvements.
A new method now enables information to save information in DNA as a binary code - as the same 0en and 1en used by conventional computers. One day this method could be cheaper and faster than the coding of information in the sequence of the building blocks, of which DNA consists of, which is currently made of cells and most efforts to Save Artificially Generated Data Corresponds to.
The method is so simple that 60 volunteers from different areas could use them to store the text of your choice. At first, many of them did not believe that the technology would work, says Long Qian, a computer-aided synthetic biologist at Beijing University in Beijing and an author of the study 1 that describes the technology.
"When they saw the sequence and got the right text back, they started to believe that they could actually do it," she explains. The study was published in Nature today.
short storage
This technology is only one of many Alternative to traditional, Electronic memory options to be transformed that cannot keep up with the increasing data production of the world. "We are reaching physical limits," says Nicholas Guise, a physicist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta. "And we constantly create more data."
The enormous storage capacity of DNA makes it an attractive alternative. In addition, DNA, if it is protected from moisture and ultraviolet light, survive hundreds of thousands of years . In contrast, electronic hard drives must be replaced every few years, or data are damaged.
The most obvious way of storing information in DNA is to insert the data into the DNA sequence, a process that requires that a DNA strand is synthesized from scratch. This approach is slow and many orders of magnitude than electronic data storage, explains Albert Keung, a synthetic biologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
In order to develop a more cost-effective, faster way, Qian and their colleagues turned to the "Epigenom"-a variety of molecules that use cells to control the genetic activity without modifying the DNA sequence itself. For example, become to change their function.
qian and her colleagues developed a system in which a number of short, prefabricated DNA "building blocks"-with or without methyl groups-could be added to a reaction vessel in order to form a growing DNA strand with the correct binary code. In order to call up the data, the researchers One DNA sequencing technology , which can detect the methyl groups along the DNA strand. The results can be interpreted as a binary code, whereby the presence of a methyl group 1 and the lack of 0 corresponds.
panda portrait in DNA
Since the technology is used pre-made DNA fragments, it could be further optimized to enable mass production, says Ketung. This would make it much cheaper than the synthesis of a tailor-made DNA strand for every information bit to be saved. The next step, according to Ketung, will be to see how well the system can be scaled to accommodate large data records.
as a step in this direction coded and read the instructions to create a picture of a tiger from the Han dynasty in ancient China and a colored image of a panda in lush green. The pictures were encoded in almost 270,000 1 and 0en, or "bits".
For the moment, the field must reduce the costs before it can compete with electronic data storage, says Guise. "DNA storage has a long way to get a long way before it can be commercially relevant," he says. "But there is a need for disruptive technology."
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Zhang, C. et al. Nature 634, 824–832 (2024).