Scientists have developed a new way to tap into the incredible data storage density of DNA in a more scalable way. A “biological camera” imprints images into the DNA of living cells, tagged with barcodes to retrieve data.
As with many human technologies, nature has greatly outdone us when it comes to data storage. DNA can store information more efficiently than any system we’ve come up with, cramming as much as 215 million GB of data into a single gram of the stuff. Better yet, under the right conditions it can last millennia or maybe even longer, so it’s not surprising that scientists are trying to find ways to store data on DNA.
But of course, there are hurdles – DNA is fiddly to synthesize artificially, and it can be fragile, both of which make it hard to use at the large scales needed. Now, scientists at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a promising new method of writing data to and reading it back from DNA. The technique works like a biological version of a digital camera, the team says, and as such they’ve dubbed it “BacCam.”
“Imagine the DNA within a cell as an undeveloped photographic film,” said Associate Professor Poh Chueh Loo, principal investigator of the study. “Using optogenetics – a technique that controls the activity of cells with light akin to the shutter mechanism of a camera, we managed to capture ‘images’ by imprinting light signals onto the DNA ‘film’.”
Essentially, lasers of red and blue light are used to trigger gene expression in specially engineered bacteria, which encodes the data in their DNA. Existing barcoding techniques are used to label data with unique ID tags, which can then be organized and retrieved using machine-learning algorithms.
In tests, the team showed that the BacCam system can be used to capture and store multiple images at the same time. Importantly, it’s easier, cheaper and more scalable to use living bacteria than synthesizing artificial DNA from scratch, and these cells are easier to keep alive under normal conditions.
“By harnessing the power of DNA and optogenetic circuits, we have created the first 'living digital camera,' which offers a cost-effective and efficient approach to DNA data storage,” said Poh. “Our work not only explores further applications of DNA data storage but also re-engineers existing data-capture technologies into a biological framework. We hope this will lay the groundwork for continued innovation in recording and storing information.”
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Source: NUS
