This rabbit contains the instructions for how to replicate itself, just like all our
living cells do.
Even though it’s very clearly not alive, its instructions are encoded into DNA and
then embedded into this 3D-printed plastic object.
This… is an advanced proof of concept for DNA as data storage.
Think about it: just like ones and zeros are the way that computers encode information,
DNA base pairs do the same.
But DNA offers more density.
It obviously packs so much data—like, all of the instructions for a human body— into
the nucleus of a cell.
And teams around the world have been demonstrating that they’re able to encode hundreds of
thousands of terabytes of digital data in gram-quantities of DNA.
Like can you picture a one-terabyte hard drive?
Yeah, now picture hundreds of thousands of those, and all of the information you could
store on them—videos, photos, the whole shebang—in just a few grams of biological
material.
So DNA offers quite an improvement on existing digital data storage methods, like the chips,
spinning discs, and magnetic tape that we’re used to.
And this rabbit is a first foray into what these researchers are calling ‘the DNA of
things’.
So how exactly do you get DNA into a plastic object like this?
The scientists stored the instructions for how to 3D print the plastic bunny in chunks
of DNA.
And then they enclosed that DNA in microscopic glass beads, which protects the DNA from the
heat of the 3D-printing process.
Then the beads were embedded into liquid plastic, and that mixture was used to 3D print the bunny.
When it’s done, you could take a tiny piece of that rabbit—like, milligram quantities—and run
it through a sequencer, decode the information stored in the DNA, and voila: you now have
the instructions to make another bunny.
And that’s just what the researchers did!
They repeated that process, creating five generations of bunnies, if you will.
And the team also showed that DNA from a bunny that was stored for nine months showed no
significant degradation of the data and could still be used to make another bunny!
The plastic rabbit is a cute and relatively simple example of a concept that is pretty mind-bending.
This same visionary team did this with a pair of glasses, too.
Using the same process, they stored the file for a short movie in the lenses of a pair
of perfectly ordinary glasses.
That is some Bond-level stuff right there.
And in addition to this tech having potential in espionage, it also has a whole host of
applications in medicine.
Medications, or personal health items like dental implants, could come equipped with
information about their safety, uses, and even about the person who needs them.
Like you could have the entirety of your medical records stored in your new fake tooth!
In DNA!?
This is all, of course, only possible if you have the right DNA purification equipment,
a portable DNA sequencer, tens of hours, and then of course, the program that decodes the
DNA into the digital information.
Y’know, just little stuff.
But teams all over the world are innovating to bring down the cost and complexity of this
tech, and to make it accessible for use in all kinds of industries, like construction, pharmaceuticals,
and electronics!
It’s really just the start of innovation in the exciting field of DNA data storage.
Because we are producing, consuming, and storing more data than ever before in human history.
As we advance our computing, and as expanding population gains access to the internet and
personal computers, that data volume isn’t going down any time soon.
We’re going to need better ways to store it and to get it to each other.
And it looks like co-opting nature’s best existing data storage strategy just may be
part of the solution.
Maybe mother nature really does know best.
If you haven’t seen our new show, Human, you should definitely check it out.
Not only because it’s great, but because we're Human, and we have a bunch of different mechanisms
that work together to keep our bodies functioning, and this show talks all about them.
If there’s a topic in particular you’d want us to cover, let us know down in the
comments, make sure to subscribe and thanks for watching.