DNA-Based Circuit Boards: Learning from The Code of Nature
Recent research breakthroughs are merging molecular biology with information technology — for better or worse... Take, for example, these DNA-based circuit boards: they can play chess.
Researchers have been tinkering with DNA-based data storage and computing for a long time.
What they are calling progress now is beginning to look downright astounding.
A breakthrough from North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University has demonstrated a unified DNA system capable of full computing operations. This means it can store, retrieve, erase, and rewrite data while solving computational tasks like… Sudoku and chess.
Dendricolloids, anyone?
The new technology was made possible by the creation of soft polymer materials with unique morphologies.
“Specifically, we have created polymer structures that we call dendricolloids – they start at the microscale, but branch off from each other in a hierarchical way to create a network of nanoscale fibers,” says Orlin Velev, co-corresponding author and the S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State.
This creates a structure with a high surface area, which allows the researchers to deposit DNA among the nanofibrils without sacrificing the data density that makes DNA attractive for data storage in the first place. In addition, they found that when they deposit DNA on the dendricolloid material, the material helps to preserve the integrity of the code.
The researchers can copy DNA information directly from the material’s surface without harming the DNA.
They can erase targeted pieces of DNA and then rewrite to the same surface, like deleting and rewriting information stored on the hard drive.
Unparalleled Storage Density
The storage density of DNA beats binary data stores that use electrons—and by a long stretch. “You could put a thousand laptops’ worth of data into DNA-based storage that’s the same size as a pencil eraser,” says project leader Albert Keung, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work.
“The ability to distinguish DNA information from the nanofibers it’s stored on allows us to perform many of the same functions you can do with electronic devices,” says Kevin Lin, first author of the paper and a former Ph.D. student at NC State.
In other words, they have built a DNA chip. Or at the least, they have built microcircuits on a three-dimensional circuit board: their dendricolloidal material.
World-Class Teamwork at Molecular Scale
NC State collaborator Adriana San Miguel helped to incorporate the materials into microfluidic channels that direct the flow of nucleic acids and reagents, allowing them to move data and initiate computing commands.
Winston Timp’s lab at Johns Hopkins contributed invaluable expertise on nanopore sequencing, which helps to directly read the data in RNA after copying it from DNA on the material’s surface. And James Tuck’s lab at NC State has developed algorithms that allow to convert data into nucleic acid sequences and vice versa while controlling for potential errors.
They called it a “primordial DNA store and compute engine”.
Whatever you call it, the device can perform the full range of DNA data storage and computing functions.
Preliminary testing suggests that it could store data securely for thousands of years in commercially available spaces without degrading the DNA.
“There’s a lot of excitement about molecular data storage and computation, but there have been significant questions about how practical the field may be,” says Keung. The dendrocolloidal host material itself is relatively inexpensive and easy to fabricate.
In other words: it is a big step towards marketability.
Just to clarify: DNA can store any information. It does not have to be biological in nature.
The paper, “A Primordial DNA Store and Compute Engine” was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. It was co-authored by Kevin Volkel and Andrew Clark, former Ph.D. students at NC State; Cyrus Cao and Rachel Polak, Ph.D. students at NC State; Adriana San Miguel, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State; James Tuck, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State; Winston Timp, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University; and Paul Hook, a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins.
The article is USD 39.95 at Springer, the Journal´s owner. Keung and Tuck are co-founders of DNAli Data Technologies. The work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Everyone gets credit, one way or the other, except for the Creator of the original idea. Primordial. Go figure.
Either way, this circuit board can play chess, so everyone wins.
Well, sort of.