Scientists trick bacteria cells into storing data

HARVARD scientists have effectively created a way to turn bacteria cells into hard drives that are alive.

Bacteria cells have been turned into data carrying hard drives by Harvard scientists.

HARVARD scientists have used a relatively new gene splicing technique to effectively create “hard drives” that are alive.

A team of scientists at the prestigious university, led by geneticists Seth Shipman and Jeff Nivala, were able to upload approximately 100 bytes of data into living cells by exploiting the bacteria’s immune response.

They used a recently developed — and somewhat controversial technology — known as CRISPR to trick the cells into storing the data, turning bacteria into carriers of computer code.

CRISPR enables scientists to find and modify or replace genetic defects leading some to raise concerns that it could be used to create babies to order.

In order to imbue the cells with the desired information, scientists essentially created fake viruses which were introduced to the bacteria. In response to the invader, the bacteria cuts out a segment of the fake virus DNA which is wedged between two pieces of actual virus DNA.

Under normal circumstances this is done so the bacteria can catalogue the virus in case it needs to fight against it in the future. But in this case, it will continue to carry the data (or fake virus) and even pass it on to future cells.

As Futurism put it, “it’s like combining the Trojan horse with Inception.”

At this point there are few practical applications for the method, which is still very much imperfect. However scientists believe it could be harnessed to achieve benefits in medical science such as combating HIV.

“These experiments lay the foundations for a recording system that could be used to monitor molecular events that occur over long time periods,” Jeff Nivala told Gizmodo.

“For instance, it could eventually help us answer questions like what happens to the gene regulation inside a cell as it goes from a healthy to disease state,” he said.

The research was recently published in the journal Science.