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Biologists Use Gene Editing To Store Movies In DNA (scientificamerican.com)
New submitter elmohound writes: A recent paper in Nature describes how gene editing was used to store a digital movie into a bacterial population. The choice of subject is a nice hommage to Muybridge's 1887 photos. From a report via Scientific American: "The technical achievement, reported on July 12 in Nature, is a step towards creating cellular recording systems that are capable of encoding a series of events, says Seth Shipman, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. To develop such a system, however, his team would need to establish a method for recording hundreds of events in a cell. Shipman and his colleagues, including Harvard geneticist George Church, harnessed the CRISPR-Cas immune system best known for enabling researchers to alter genomes with relative ease and accuracy. Shipman's team exploited the ability to capture snippets of DNA from invading viruses and store them in an organized array in the host genome. In nature, those snippets then target an enzyme to slice up the invader's DNA. The team designed its system so that these snippets corresponded to pixels in an image. The researchers encoded the shading of each pixel --
along with a barcode that indicated its position in the image -- into 33 DNA letters. Each frame of the movie consisted of 104 of these DNA fragments." You can view the movie here, which consists of five frames adapted from Muybridge's Human and Animal Locomotion series.
Although storing a *movie* in DNA isn't in it self particularly useful, this is an impressive feat and demonstrative of just how much of a revolution CRISPR really is. The golden age of gene tweaking we where promised is upon us. Now, what are we gonna do with it.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Encoding information in DNA is just one step toward achieving a larger goal: data logging into cell genomes. What Seth Shipman is trying figure out more about our brains like how neurons determine which type of thing to become. From his own page:
Yet, despite identical genetics, the neurons in our brain are remarkably diverse at the molecular level – diversity that defines unique cellular properties (think morphology, localization, projection profile, and neurotransmitter type for example) that can be used to classify the mature cell into a category of cell-type.
This video has more information.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Being able to record detailed data in a genome raises the question: has this already been done before?
Ever since I read the Dune series, Bene Gesserit was my favorite faction. To be able to draw upon the experience of your ancestors, have it within you and need no tech, what a treasure. And now, with these types of technology, I can't help but think how our knowledge could finally be encoded in our DNA. Think about being able to leave messages for your descendants encoded in your DNA. Or deeds, or a "species blockchain" that can record notable events.. Encoding brain-muscle memory for physical skills like martial arts or dancing.. what times to live in.
Maybe we'll have a specialized tumor/organ at some point in our bodies, holding just artificially inserted data and the mechanism to read that data and output it to one of our senses. Or even an Nth sense: "read DNA memory". Finally, a way for our species' knowledge to survive even if civilization collapses.
Jeeez, guys - get a grip. This is equivalent to storing a dozen words - - - and stating that they have stored an encyclopedia.
OK, so it's an animated GIF-like sequence - it's STILL ONLY FIVE IMAGES - NOT a FUCKING MOVIE ! ! !
Granted, the technology will eventually graduate to the data density needed to actually STORE A MOVIE, it's still in it's early infant stage and just doesn't even come close to the article TITLE ! ! !
Break out the mod points and have a ball, I'm karma flush - - - and THIS article deserves even WORSE than I stated - - - it's basically pure bull-shit sensationalism - - - and seems to have made it to the /. pages because it's a slow news day.
redneck geek
the piracy tool we've all been waiting for!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
It's worth noting that the recovered data has errors. You can see that the recovered images don't look exactly the same as the original ones. So, currently this would need redundant data and checksums to ve a viable storage medium
So are we're going to be able to do what was in the Star Trek Next Generation episode The Chase or are we going to find it was already done to us?
I'm sure the lawyers are the RIAA and MPAA are already working on how to ruin this. Check for a job listing for a gene editing specialist. How does one ruin gene editing with DRM?
They're going to store Gattaca
Just think how we'll laugh when we learn that our whole existence is due to some alien race wanting to store their Saturday morning cartoons.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You mean "T," "G," "A," "C?"
Is there any chance that this "random" set of DNA sequences would create an invasive and deadly pathogen? Wouldn't it be dangerous to just blindly put together random DNA snippets into a microorganism? Storing DNA by itself seems fair but inside a living, evolving, and reproducing organism seems a bit short-sighted...
-SaNo
..did they have the copyright?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
correlate with the deadliness of the virus? If yes, we should quarantine Transfomers 5 at once.
I commend scientists for finding a way to preserve the artistic integrity of Pauly Shore films through the decades using humans as the easily-reproduceable copies. In this way our robotic overlords can enjoy the hackneyed talent for millennia to come.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Obligatory SMBC reference: SMBC about gene editing
The first phone call consisted of a few words transmitted a short distance. The first movie was a short series of moving images. The first movie with people talking didn't have much dialogue in it. The first computers had pitiful storage space by modern standards and took up entire rooms.
The "First" of something is always very limited. You're not going to get the DNA equivalent of a Blu-Ray Player from the first storage of a movie in DNA. However, as more people work on it and more advances are made, larger amounts of data will be stored until a "DNA Movie Player" becomes feasible.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Just don't encode any zombie movies into DNA. Just in case.
...it was far more difficult to find a movie worth storing at all.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I wasn't exchanging bodily fluids with her. We were exchanging movies. You want to watch the new Wonder Woman movie?
I feel that movie in every fibre of my being. Literally.
The movie beings no benefit to bacteria, hence it will be slowly killed by mutations. I do not see how such a storage system could work without freezing the storage bacteria.
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