As efficient as electronic data storage systems can be, they’ve got nothing on nature’s own version – DNA. A new technique for writing data to DNA works like a printing press and makes it easy enough that anyone could do it.
Writing data to DNA usually involves synthesizing strands one letter at a time, like threading beads onto a string. That’s obviously a very slow process, especially when there can be billions of those letters, or bases, in a given DNA sequence.
But the new DNA printing press drastically speeds the process up. The team created a set of 700 DNA bricks, each containing 24 bases, that work like movable type pieces. These can be arranged into a desired order and then used to ‘print’ their data onto DNA template strands.
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