Researchers embedded a 3D-printed plastic white rabbit with DNA that contains instructions for printing new bunnies. Using the information, the rabbit can be replicated not just one time but several times. The innovative method, allows users to save data in everyday objects such as water bottles, shirt buttons, or even the lenses of glasses, and then retrieve it years later. The technique makes it possible to hide information and store it for future generations.
Living organisms contain their own assembly and blueprint in the form of DNA. However, that’s not the case with human-made objects: anyone wishing to 3D print an object requires a set of instructions. If they want to print that same object again later, they need to have the original digital information, because the object itself doesn’t contain the printing instructions.
The bunny was developed by a team led by Robert Grass at Zurich’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and an Israeli scientist, Yaniv Erlich of the Erlich Lab, a DNA storage company in Israel. “One day, Erlich wrote an email – ‘Hey, what if we put real information into your object? That would be really cool,'” said Grass.
The team used four DNA bases, thymine (T), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and adenine (A), to encode the 45-kilobyte instructions for making the rabbit. Then, the corresponding DNA sequence was synthesized. Before the DNA was incorporated into the plastic that formed the bunny, it was packaged into microscopic spheres of glass to protect it.
The researchers tested if their 3-D bunny was properly embedded with DNA by cutting off a very tiny piece of its plastic ear and isolating the integrated DNA. They read the specific sequence of DNA bases via a DNA sequencing machine, which was converted into instructions for the 3D printer. Then, the 3D printer successfully produced an identical white bunny, complete with DNA-filled glass spheres. The team used this second rabbit to create a third and then a fourth.
Grass recalled:
We were extremely happy once we could read our first bunnies.
George Church, from Harvard University, believes that DNA storage could be used in future applications in manufacturing, where instructions could be saved in an object such as medicine.
Calin Plesa, from the University of Oregon, said:
Any potential application is still likely years away, but this study is certain to inspire creative uses we can’t predict right now. It is interesting to think of a possible distant future where archaeologists use the DNA embedded in human-made artifacts to learn more about our civilization.
Grass plans to pursue the research, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology and aims to make DNA storage an everyday technology.
