The first episode of the new series “Biohackers” was stored as artificial DNA.This was made imaginable through the studies of Professor Reinhard Heckel of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and his colleague Professor Robert Grass of ETH Zurich.approach that allows the solid garage of giant amounts of DNA knowledge for more than 1000 years.
Professor Heckel, Biohackers is about a medical student’s revenge against a professor with a dark beyond and DNA manipulation with biotechnological tools.You were assigned the task of storing the series in the DNA.How does it work?
First, I deserve to mention that we are talking about artificially generated DNA, i.e. synthetic DNA is composed of 4 constituent elements: nucleotides of adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C).Computer knowledge, on the other hand, is encoded in the form of zeros and ones.The first episode of Biohackers consists of a series of about six hundred million zeros and ones.To encode the DNA series 01 01 11 00, for example, we know which combinations of numbers will correspond to which letters.For example: 00 is A, 01 is C, 10 is G, and 11 is T.Our example produces the CCTA DNA series. Using this DNA knowledge storage precept, we store the first episode of the DNA series.
And to watch the series, is this a “reverse translation” of letters?
In a very simplified sense, you can visualize it this way. However, when writing, storing, and reading, DNA errors occur.If those errors are not corrected, the knowledge stored in the DNA will be lost.To solve the problem, I developed a set of rules based on channel encoding.This approach consists of correcting errors that occur in data transfers.The concept behind this is to load redundancy into knowledge.Think of language: when we read or hear a word with missing or incorrect letters, the computation force of our brain can still perceive the word.The rule set follows the same principle: it encodes knowledge with sufficient redundancy to ensure that even very erroneous knowledge can be retrieved later.
Channel coding is used in many areas, telecommunications.What demanding situations did you face in finding your solution?
The first challenge was to create a set of rules specially adapted to the errors that occur in THE DNA; the moment was to make the set of rules so effective that the greatest amount of knowledge imaginable can be stored in the least amount of DNA imaginable., so only the amount of redundancy would be added that is probably mandatory.We have shown that our rule set is optimized in this regard.
The DNA knowledge garage is very expensive due to the complexity of DNA production as well as the reading process.What makes DNA a hot medium despite these challenges?
First, DNA has a very high density of information.This allows you to buy massive amounts of knowledge in minimal space.In the case of the TV series, we bought “only” one hundred megabytes in a picogram, or a billionth of a However, in theory, it would be imaginable to buy up to two hundred exabytes in one gram of DNA, and the DNA lasts a long time.By comparison: if you never turn on your PC or write information to the hard drive it contains, the information will disappear after a few years.On the other hand, DNA can remain solid for several thousand years if well packaged.
And the evolved approach also makes DNA chains durable, virtually indestructible.
My colleague Robert Grass was the first to extend a procedure for the “stable packaging” of DNA strands by encapsulating them in nanoscale silica glass spheres, ensuring that DNA is protected from mechanical influences.In a joint article in 2015, we introduced the first physically The powerful dna knowledge garage concept with our set of rules and the encapsulation procedure evolved through Professor Grass.Since then, we have often advanced our method.In our last publication on Nature Protocols in January 2020, we shared what we learned.
What are your next steps?Does DNA Knowledge Garage have a future?
We are moving towards a way to make DNA knowledge less expensive and faster.Biohackers are a vital step on the road to commercialization.But we still have a long way to go.If this generation succeeds, wonderful things will be possible: entire libraries, all movies, photos, music and wisdom of all kinds, provided they can be represented as knowledge, can simply be stored in DNA and therefore be available to humanity.Eternity.
Linda C.Meiser, Philipp L.Antkowiak, Julian Koch, Weide D.Chen, A.Xavier Kohll, Wendelin J.Stark, Reinhard Heckel, Robert N.Grass: “Reading and writing virtual knowledge in DNA”.Published in Nature Protocols in January 2020 DOI: 10.1038 / s41596-019-0244-5