Our genetic material stores how we look and how our body works. This distinguishes us from objects - still. Researchers are working to equip things with DNA as well. In the 3D printer, they have now produced a plastic rabbit, which contains its own construction manual in the form of DNA.
The technology makes it possible to restore objects even after decades or centuries, even if the original instructions no longer exist, explains Robert Grass of the ETH Zurich. The hare serves only as an example. Basically, the technology can be used in a variety of materials, even in liquids, the researchers report in the journal "Nature Biotechnology".
The idea of storing data in genetic material is not new. To do this, researchers assign sequences of zeros and ones to unique sequences of DNA bases. This allows the information to be saved on a hard disk. The advantage: They take up much less space and are not easily damaged. In 2017 researchers placed 215,000 terabytes of data in just one gram of DNA.
Information was preserved over five rabbit generations
The problem: So far, the DNA data storage could not be easily incorporated into foreign material. The researchers have now developed a substrate made of tiny glass beads, in which the molecules can be embedded. These nano-elements finally integrated them into the plastic from which they made the hare.
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"Just like real rabbits, our bunnies carry their blueprint in the form of DNA," explains Grass. The information could be obtained over several generations. So the researchers cut off a piece of the rabbit's ear and, using a sequencing machine, read out the 45-kilobyte printing instructions stored in the DNA.
Using a 3D printer, they produced a second rabbit. The step they repeated a total of five times. Later, they also stored a 1.4-megabyte short film in DNA and integrated it - again in the form of nanospheres - in spectacle lenses.
"All other known forms of memory have a fixed geometry: a hard drive must look like a hard drive, a CD like a CD, you can not change the shape without losing information," said Israeli computer scientist Yaniv Erlich, who also participated in the study was. DNA is the only data storage form that also works fluently. Thus, it can be integrated into objects of any shape. In theory, data packets could be stored in a carrier medium as well as in human tissue. Similar to a chip under the skin, information could be transported in the body.
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The researchers believe that their technology could be used to transport secret information through airport controls. Also, one day building materials could be tagged with the technology to be able to determine years later from which manufacturer they originate. Also information about medications could be stored in the pills themselves.
However, the technology is still too expensive and too cumbersome to use it in everyday life. The DNA storage for the hare cost the researchers the equivalent of about 1800 euros. The largest part was attributed to the production of the appropriate DNA molecules. In addition, the memory can only be read with quite expensive machines.
