A library in a handful of seeds
You can store information in the DNA of plants
Evgenia Efimova, Vesti
Imagine that you keep your entire collection of music and the complete works of, say, Shakespeare in indoor plants. Scientists from Slovenia are developing a system that will allow storing entire archives of data in plant DNA.
In the era of information technology, we are increasingly faced with the problem of data storage. Every day we produce and record a huge amount of information. According to statistics, humanity produces two and a half exabytes of data every day – that's 2,500 billion gigabytes.
In order to save information, we use various media, but they all have a limited capacity and a limited service life (however, individual experimental hard drives can store information for 10 thousand years). Many digital data are stored in Google's data processing centers in Finland and America. But they will eventually run out.
Researcher at the University Medical Center in Slovenia (University Medical Center Maribor) Karin Ljubic Fister believes that the solution can be simple: you need to store information in the form of a binary code in the DNA of plants.
She presented the results of an experimental study in Berlin at The Falling Walls lab conference. "One simple tree can provide all the information about the education system anywhere in the world. Of course, such technology can potentially replace all large data centers," the scientist notes.
According to Fister, translating the four-letter language of DNA into binary code will allow storing huge amounts of information in plant DNA. She explained the technological aspects of the program as follows. A computer program is essentially a sequence of zeros and ones, scientists have transformed the four-letter "language" of DNA (A, G, C and T) into the same sequence. And at the same time it corresponded to 00, C – 10, G – 01 and T – 11.
A section of synthetic DNA with a digital code in it was assembled by letters, and then with the help of bacteria it was embedded in the native DNA of the plant.
Illustration from the website karin-l-fister.com .
Karin Fister and her husband Iztok Fister (Iztok Fister) confirmed their methodology with the help of an experiment. They encoded the message "Hello, world" with a computer program into the seeds of a tobacco plant using circular DNA called plasmids.
The new plants, which were grown from seeds, contained modified DNA in each cell.
In order to obtain information, scientists extracted DNA from plants and sequenced it using existing DNA analysis methods. The researchers then transferred the data back to the binary system and received the original message on the screen: "Hello, world."
There is only one problem – the way to extract data from plants destroys them, damaging, for example, leaves. But the necessary technology is already at the development stage, so that one day it will be possible to read the information embedded in the DNA without any damage to the plant, the scientists note.
According to Fister, such an experiment is the first demonstration of data storage in the DNA of a multicellular organism. Let's add that in 2013, scientists proved that the simplest slime molds can store information.
A researcher from Slovenia sees an obvious "green" future, where all library archives are stored in one tree – literally, the "tree of knowledge".
"Imagine that you are walking through a park, which is actually a "living" library. Here every plant or flower is filled with information. You sit on a bench, touch a portable "DNA reader" and read a novel, or listen to the Rolling Stones, or watch a documentary," says Fister in an interview with the New Scientist website.
With the appropriate interface, she notes, people will be able to view any information. But we won't be able to edit the records. Messages stored in DNA are read-only, so this technique is suitable for archiving. "A single box of seeds can save almost all the archives that are currently in the world," says Fister.
DNA molecules are incredibly "durable" and can store huge amounts of information compared to existing hardware. Other researchers have estimated that one gram of DNA will save 14 thousand BluRay discs.
In addition, another advantage is the shelf life. A study last year showed that information on DNA storage devices can be stored for thousands of years.
Science fiction sometimes becomes reality, it seems that the new technique is another example of this.
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21.01.2015