Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

DNA can be used to take pictures, and it is the kind that is directly stored!

The research team at the National University of Singapore successfully projected the image onto DNA and stored it at a resolution of 96 pixels.

Even, using the same DNA sequence, you can store multiple copies!

Traditional DNA storage needs to build DNA sequences from scratch and encode them by artificial synthesis.

But this result directly uses DNA extracted from E. coli, and the encoders that convert images into DNA digital signals are also living cells.

So, by combining bacteria (Bacteria) with cameras (Camera), the team named the result BacCam.

BacCam not only greatly improves the efficiency of DNA storage, but also has strong robustness, which can withstand some common special environments.

The related papers have been published in the Nature sub-journal.

Nvidia AI scientist Linxi Fan (Jim Fan) also forwarded this result.

Although I am not an expert in biology, I look forward to seeing a seamless connection between biology and machines. I can't wait to mount the Big language Model (LLM) to the Biological API!

In the experiment without fear, BacCam showed strong robustness.

For one of the images, after diluting the DNA by 50, 000 times, the data was not affected at all.

The diluted DNA concentration is only 0.36 skin (10-12) moles per liter, several orders of magnitude lower than putting a grain of sand in a pool.

However, dilution has little effect on the DNA molecule itself, which may not be enough to explain the problem.

But when the solution is dried and restored, the familiar smiling face is still visible.

BacCam can also easily deal with complex external environmental conditions.

In addition to being kept intact at room temperature, freezing and heating have little effect on the data.

In a 60-degree oven for a week, the image is still intact, but 70 degrees is not good.

But according to the paper, putting the DNA down at 70 degrees last week is equivalent to putting it down at 9.4 degrees in 2000.

Even if it is exposed to ultraviolet light for an hour, the data in it remains untouched.

As for the DNA that stores different images, it does not need to be saved separately, but can be directly mixed together.

After mixing different DNA, we only need to use specific primers to amplify the needed part when reading.

The team mixed five pieces of DNA with different images, and the result was that the image remained almost intact at a single read, with a minimum accuracy of 80 per cent for multiple random reads.

△ B behavior single read, C behavior multiple random reads, so how does it do that?

The general workflow of dealing with BacCam in a dot-matrix way is that of my aunt:

First, the image to be stored is divided into 96 regions.

Then, using the recombinant enzyme that is sensitive to light at a specific wavelength, the DNA is edited according to whether the light at that wavelength is present or not.

This "bar code" editing method directly retains the spatial position of each pixel in the image, so that the image is digitized without additional coding.

In addition, using the multiplexing ability of light and enzymes sensitive to different wavelengths, the team layered the orthogonal red and blue color images and realized the storage of two images in the same sequence.

Under this storage mode, BacCam still has a high accuracy.

Using machine learning, the research team optimizes the decoding method of BacCam.

After a lot of unsupervised learning, the automatic interpretation of DNA coding has been realized.

About the team BacCam's research team is from the EngBio Laboratory of the National University of Singapore.

The laboratory mainly carries out interdisciplinary engineering research with biology as the core.

The first author of the paper is Cheng Kai Lim, a Chinese doctoral student from this laboratory.

His research direction is to use DNA for data storage, while also studying for an MBA degree.

Professor Chueh Loo Poh, Lim's mentor and head of the laboratory, is the correspondent author of this article.

Paper address:

Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38876-w

Reference link:

Https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1676626884141129730

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