Digital data storage on DNA tape using CRISPR base editors

Nat Commun. 2023 Oct 13;14(1):6472. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42223-4.

Abstract

While the archival digital memory industry approaches its physical limits, the demand is significantly increasing, therefore alternatives emerge. Recent efforts have demonstrated DNA's enormous potential as a digital storage medium with superior information durability, capacity, and energy consumption. However, the majority of the proposed systems require on-demand de-novo DNA synthesis techniques that produce a large amount of toxic waste and therefore are not industrially scalable and environmentally friendly. Inspired by the architecture of semiconductor memory devices and recent developments in gene editing, we created a molecular digital data storage system called "DNA Mutational Overwriting Storage" (DMOS) that stores information by leveraging combinatorial, addressable, orthogonal, and independent in vitro CRISPR base-editing reactions to write data on a blank pool of greenly synthesized DNA tapes. As a proof of concept, this work illustrates writing and accurately reading of both a bitmap representation of our school's logo and the title of this study on the DNA tapes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • CRISPR-Cas Systems / genetics
  • Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats* / genetics
  • DNA Replication
  • DNA* / genetics
  • Gene Editing / methods
  • Information Storage and Retrieval

Substances

  • DNA

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.24143649