Jurassic Park’s amber-preserved dino DNA is now inspiring a way to store data 

Sometimes subject fabrication does animate subject research. À la Jurassic Park’s entombed mosquito, scientists person developed a method to shop DNA successful an amberlike worldly and still extract it easy hours later. This retention method is cheaper and faster than existing options, nan researchers study successful nan June Journal of nan American Chemical Society.

If you want to shop accusation for a very agelong time, perchance forever, DNA is nan measurement to do it, says James Banal, a chemist astatine MIT and method head of a biotechnology institution called Cache DNA, headquartered successful San Carlos, Calif. DNA stores nan familial accusation of millions of organisms, but it tin perchance beryllium utilized to shop any benignant of information, including integer information specified arsenic text, photos, videos and much (SN: 10/2/19).

DNA’s retention density is galore orders of magnitude higher than that of immoderate instrumentality humans person created. For example, if each movie ever made was encoded successful DNA, it would fresh wrong nan measurement of a sweetener cube pinch room to spare. But DNA is besides incredibly vulnerable and needs observant handling and storage. Existing retention methods require freezing temperatures, specialized instrumentality aliases hazardous chemicals specified arsenic hydrofluoric acid. Researchers person tried storing DNA astatine room somesthesia successful silica and different materials, without success.

Banal and colleagues’ caller method, called Thermoset-REinforced Xeropreservation (T-REX), encapsulates DNA successful glassy polymer networks astatine room temperature. Using a operation of lock-and-key chemicals that “open up” nan polymer’s structure, nan researchers tin retrieve nan DNA. The worldly is akin to polystyrene plastic, picked by nan squad because it isn’t easy surgery down by nature: Anything encapsulated successful integrative tin strengthen for a very agelong time. But nan squad made a mini yet important summation to nan integrative — a chemic weakness successful nan shape of a molecule called thionolactone. “That allows america to deconstruct nan polymer to get nan accusation back,” Banal says.

To trial nan resilience of nan polymer, nan researchers encapsulated strands of DNA containing nan encoded Jurassic Park taxable euphony and a human’s full familial instruction book successful nan amberlike worldly and past exposed it to temperatures of 55° Celsius, 65° C and 75° C astatine 70 percent humidity complete 7 days. The squad utilized benign reagents, alternatively than hydrofluoric acid, to extract nan stored DNA, past utilized DNA-reading techniques to retrieve nan stored information, each successful a matter of hours — not nan days needed to do this pinch silica-based materials.

Once extracted, nan DNA tin moreover beryllium re-encapsulated utilizing nan aforesaid material, successful “a information benignant of chemistry that is really very beautiful,” Banal says.

The T-REX method appears to beryllium much businesslike than existing methods to shop DNA astatine room temperature, says Dina Zielinski, a computational biologist astatine Whitelab Genomics, a institution successful Paris focused connected creating integer devices to accelerate supplier development. “So moreover though 1 could reason that nan improvements are incremental [compared pinch silica methods], they do bring america person to practically being capable to shop nucleic acerb for hundreds, moreover thousands, of years astatine room temperature, which has broad-reaching impact.”

Banal and colleagues are moving connected making nan method simpler truthful that it tin 1 time beryllium utilized successful nan section to cod and sphere familial information aliases different specimens, for illustration seeds aliases proteins, successful distant locations — aliases moreover utilized to carrier biologic molecules for abstraction research.