Cientistas armazenam mensagem de texto em bactérias

 

Transcrição do texto:

Boffins store text message inside E. coli bacteria using electromagnetic signal – and you'll never guess what it says

US scientists claim to have developed a method for storing data directly in the DNA of living bacteria cells by using a new electromagnetic technique.

Although DNA – the biological source code of life – is being widely investigated as a potential digital storage medium, the vast majority of DNA-based data storage approaches rely on synthesised DNA stored outside living organisms.

A group of researchers led by Harris Wang, associate professor at New York's Columbia University, say they have shown that by using electrical signals to tune biomolecules and sensors in cells, they could transfer digital data from a computer to living cells.

Using a CRISPR-based DNA recorder, the team said it was able to write all possible states of a 3-bit binary data stream into living cells, which could be stacked and "barcoded" to increase memory capacity.

"This work establishes a direct digital-to-biological data storage framework and advances our capacity for information exchange between silicon and carbon-based entities," states the research paper published in Nature Chemical Biology.

"Data stored in these 'living hard drives' are stably maintained and effectively protected – over multiple cell generations – from external environments where naked DNA would otherwise be degraded," the paper adds.

As well as a new scope for data storage, the researchers reckon the study could also provide the basis for technologies that hide data "within a natural microbial community to enable an additional layer of data security by obscurity".

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The researchers were able to encode a 12-byte text message directly into cell of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria by splitting the text into 12 individual 6-bit characters, with each assigned to two barcoded cell populations holding 3-bit data each. The message the researchers stored? They were unable to resist the temptation to write "hello world!" – a homage to computing history.

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https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/12/e_coli_dna_data_storage/