Totally RAD: Bioengineers Create Rewritable Digital Data Storage in DNA

Scientists have devised a method for repeatedly encoding, storing and erasing digital data within the DNA of living cells.

Sometimes, remembering and forgetting are hard to do.

“It took us three years and 750 tries to make it work, but we finally did it,” said Jerome Bonnet, PhD, of his latest research, a method for repeatedly encoding, storing and erasing digital data within the DNA of living cells.

Bonnet, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, worked with graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn and assistant professor Drew Endy, PhD, to reapply natural enzymes adapted from bacteria to flip specific sequences of DNA back and forth at will. All three scientists work in the Department of Bioengineering, a joint effort of the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine.

In practical terms, they have devised the genetic equivalent of a binary digit — a “bit” in data parlance. “Essentially, if the DNA section points in one direction, it’s a zero. If it points the other way, it’s a one,” Subsoontorn explained.

“Programmable data storage within the DNA of living cells would seem an incredibly powerful tool for studying cancer, aging, organismal development and even the natural environment,” said Endy.

Researchers could count how many times a cell divides, for instance, and that might someday give scientists the ability to turn off cells before they turn cancerous.

Read more about this awesome development here.

Scientists Redraw the Blueprint of the Biological Clock. The discovery of a major gear in the biological clock that tells the body when to sleep and metabolize food may lead to new drugs to treat sleep problems and metabolic disorders, including diabetes.

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, led by Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, showed that two cellular switches found on the nucleus of mouse cells, known as REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ, are essential for maintaining normal sleeping and eating cycles and for metabolism of nutrients from food.

The findings, reported March 29 in Nature, describe a powerful link between circadian rhythms and metabolism and suggest a new avenue for treating disorders of both systems, including jet lag, sleep disorders, obesity and diabetes.

Read more here and here.

Lighting up plant cells to engineer biology.   A new technique using fluorescence to automatically measure and map cellular activity in living plant tissue will contribute to better computer models that are at the heart of synthetic biology, the attempts to engineer living systems.

This new technique involves fluorescent proteins, such as those originally found in certain jellyfish and corals. The proteins are used to mark and consequently identify specific parts of cells – the nuclei and membrane – mapping the development, position and geometry of the cellular make-up in the living plant tissue.

The researchers combine the advanced imaging processes with algorithms that automate quantitative analysis of cell growth and genetic activity within living organisms to precisely reconstruct cellular dynamics – and produce a numerical description that can be used to inform computer models.

Read more here.

Powering the Cell: Mitochondria.  Together Harvard University and XVIVO developed this 3D animation journey for Harvard’s undergraduate Molecular and Cellular Biology students about the microscopic world of mitochondria. The animation highlights the creation of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) – mobile molecules which store chemical energy derived from the breakdown of carbon-based food. ATP molecules act as a kind of currency, imparting chemical energy to power all the functional components of cellular activity. This piece is the second in a series of award winning animations XVIVO is creating for Harvard’s educational website BioVisions at Harvard.