Researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge announced the creation of a method that will allow encrypted data to be stored in DNA molecules, as well as rewritten. Scientists talked about this in the journal Nano Letters.
Researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge announced the creation of a method that will allow encrypted data to be stored in DNA molecules, as well as rewritten. Scientists talked about this in the journal Nano Letters.
The idea of storing information using genetic code is to synthesize long DNA molecules with individual sequences of basic blocks. The data recording density, which is achieved in this way, is orders of magnitude higher than in existing magnetic or solid-state technologies, and the storage time reaches thousands, not tens of years. The durability and density of the DNA data would be especially useful for archiving, if not for some significant limitations.
“One of the biggest challenges is making DNA,” says Ulrich Keizer, a professor of applied physics at Cambridge University. - The de novo synthesis of DNA molecules with given sequences of basic units is rather long, very laborious and requires the use of enzymes. But with our approach, it has become easier - it's like building a model from LEGO bricks. You just mix the ingredients, heat and cool them."
Reading data stored in DNA sequences is also slow and expensive. Sequencing technology has come a long way, but it still relies heavily on making billions of copies of a molecule to amplify signals from protein interactions. An alternative sequencing method passes a DNA molecule through a nanopore and reads the sequence in real time based on changes in ionic current as different base pairs pass through it. Although it is cheaper and more efficient, reading bits from a DNA sequence in this way is still too time-consuming for storage technologies.
The authors of the new work have developed an approach that allows you to easily and accurately read information using nanopores and write it down by simply mixing substances. The key to the new approach is to control the “annealing” of the sticky ends of single-stranded DNA. The nucleotide sequence in the DNA backbone is the same in all molecules used, but the complementary strand that is biotinylated may contain other bases. When the complementary strand is biotinylated, it will bind to streptavidin molecules, making it easy to detect the change in ion current as DNA passes through the nanopore. Accordingly, the presence of this substance on a particular part of DNA is recorded in the reading program as "1", and its absence as "0".
The new technology for writing and reading information uses an additional single-stranded DNA that remains sticking out after functionalization, which makes it easy to erase and rewrite information. The data remains encrypted by the biotinylated filaments sticking out. This is possible because only someone who knows the sequence of the sticky ends of single-stranded DNA will know what sequence the complementary strand linked to streptovidin must have in order to have the sequence of zeros and ones obtained by nanopore sequencing. Now the researchers plan to scale up the technology, to experiment with substances other than streptovidin to improve the efficiency of the processes of recording and deleting information.
Author: Nikita Shevtsev
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