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DNA of Microbes used for data repository

Image credit: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room

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Nitish
Nitish Oct 30, 2020
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With the growing amount of data, we are facing a severe problem of its storage. However, in silico storage facilities are provinding unlimited space to store a humongous amount of data. But these systems certainly have their own limits. Therefore, in recent times a new approach has been developed to store the binary information (0s and 1s) of computers in the form of ATGC nucleobases of microbes. A large amount of data i.e. ~215 million Gb of it can be stored in just a gram of microbial genomic DNA . Till now the scientists have achieved a limit of 1.8 bites of data per nucloeotide of DNA which is surly going to increase in upcoming future. One of the remarkable achievement of this technlogy has been performed recently, when scientists have encoded a digital movie inside the microbial genomes using CRISPR-Cas system, and also were able to retrieve the substatial information after culturing, harvesting, and sequencing of their engineered genomes .
Albeit, this technology has many limitations, most importantly its cost. But with growing interests and need of this field, we will soon see some neccesory developments in this aspect.

[1]https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/dna-could-store-all-worlds-data-one-room

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23017

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Shubhankar Kulkarni
Shubhankar Kulkarni4 years ago
A majority of DNA-based data storage techniques use in vitro DNA synthesis. Recently, a research group came up with a new electrogenetic framework for direct storage of digital data in living cells. They used an engineered redox-responsive CRISPR adaptation system to encode binary data in 3-bit units into CRISPR arrays of bacterial cells by electrical stimulation. The information storage capacity is up to 72 bits. [1]

Reference:
1. Yim, S.S., McBee, R.M., Song, A.M. et al. Robust direct digital-to-biological data storage in living cells. Nat Chem Biol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-020-00711-4
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Nitish
Nitish4 years ago
Wow! now this we can say a significant improvement. Thank you for sharing sir 😄
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Martina Pesce
Martina Pesce4 years ago
I agree with the current struggles which make it a hard to use the device for the general user, but I believe that it may be a good investment to sort out a problem that was being discussed here: https://brainstorming.com/sessions/how-to-create-an-internet-where-%22big-data%22-isn't-a-problem/180

If to sort out the too many and sensible data problems the solution will be to actually store for short time, as some suggested in the session, then this tool would be absolutely perfect for its intrinsic property of auto-destruction.

As such, it can find application for any situation in which is needed to hold a lot of information for a short amount of time. Some examples:
-raw data storage for scientific research
-raw data storage for any field, actually
-google databases ( for example for maps, since it gets updated anyway every now and then you don't really need to keep ALL the information forever)


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Shubhankar Kulkarni
Shubhankar Kulkarni4 years ago
The idea is good and feasible. I see one problem in the long term. The microbial species evolve way faster. That might bring about changes in the genome and, therefore, the data. There should be some mechanism in place to reduce the changes brought about in the DNA. The proper maintenance of the culture conditions can be one of the ways to reduce drift. However, that will not solve the problem 100%.

Please do check the contribution "Deinococcus radiodurans as safe-keeper of the host cell's DNA" here (https://brainstorming.com/sessions/engineered-endosymbiosis:-what-would-be-some-amazing-collaborations/164). In short, Deinococcus radiodurans protects it own DNA form damage well. The underlying mechanisms can be exploited to keep the DNA from changing. Since mutation is the first step to evolution, let's nab it in its bud. By disallowing mutations, we can probably hold off/ slow down drastically the evolution of the species that are storing the data.
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jnikola
jnikola4 years ago
It's really cool idea! It would be nice to see the comparison of the size and maintenance costs of storing 215 GB of data in microbial genome and in silico (hard drive somewhere).

The main problem is, I think, what else do you need to read and write the data in your "alive drive"? I guess you need a lab with good equipment, enough computing power to do the R&W process fast and efficient, plus it all needs to be very sterile so you do not contaminate your data :D.

Although it seems really cool and could be suitable for higher-level of encryption (using specific posttranscriptional modifications or epigenetics e.g.) it still needs to find its proper niche of application.
For everyday user of technology, it seems that it is not saving your money or time if you store your 50GB of highschool photos in a 230 nanograms of microbes.

But definitely something that could grow big if developed slowly and smartly.
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