Science Daily December 9, 2019
DNA storage offers substantial information density and exceptional half-life. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Israel) devised a ‘DNA-of-things’ (DoT) storage architecture to produce materials with immutable memory. In a DoT framework, DNA molecules record the data, and these molecules are then encapsulated in nanometer silica beads, which are fused into various materials that are used to print or cast objects in any shape. They applied DoT to three-dimensionally print a Stanford Bunny that contained a 45 kB digital DNA blueprint for its synthesis. Then they synthesized five generations of the bunny, each from the memory of the previous generation without additional DNA synthesis or degradation of information. DoT could be applied to store electronic health records in medical implants, to hide data in everyday objects (steganography) and to manufacture objects containing their own blueprint. It may also facilitate the development of self-replicating machines…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
A 3D-printed plastic rabbit. The plastic contains DNA molecules in which the printing instructions have been encoded. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Julian Koch)