Each time we cross swords with the bacterium Escherichia coli, we run the risk of ending up with diarrhea and in bed. However, it is very easy to cultivate, and genetics experts have worked with it for years. The latest development on E. coli brings us to a study published by scientists at Harvard University, who once again demonstrated the storage potential of DNA by encoding an animated GIF of a galloping horse in living bacteria. All of this was made possible thanks to CRISPR–Cas, the formidable gene editing tool.
DNA Storage: A Brief History
The first time we talked about data storage in DNA was in mid-2012, when a Harvard team managed to store an entire book. A couple of years later we discovered that the band OK Go did the same using one of their videos, and last March, two researchers repeated the process with a film, an operating system, and even a gift card. All of those experiments used the technique of in vitro synthesis and sequencing, but this time, another team of researchers at Harvard stored data inside living E. coli bacteria… the same E. coli we expel in abundance with our fecal matter.
The Galloping Horse GIF
What exactly did they store? Copies of several images, and an animated GIF of the famous work The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge. Besides demonstrating the virtues of DNA as a hard drive, the study also served to push the limits of the extraordinary genetic editor CRISPR–Cas. When reading the images by sequencing the bacterial genome, they found that the precision in the recovery process was 90 percent. Needless to say, any storage idea does not allow for information loss, but according to Jeff Nivala, storing an animated GIF in living E. coli is only a proof of concept, and his ultimate goal is much more complex.
The Future of Cellular Recording
In essence, the plan is to get cells to collect data about themselves and store it in their genomes for later retrieval, something like a molecular ticker tape. One of the greatest interests among scientists is to reliably record the development of neurons, and why not, record synaptic activity.
