Scientists at Harvard Medical School have used the CRISPR/Cas system to encode an animated GIF into the DNA of living E. coli bacteria. They used Eadweard Muybridge ‘s famous 1872 footage of a galloping horse as the source material. In order to prepare the short film for genome insertion, each digital frame was encoded into a nucleic acid sequence. Because DNA has four nucleotides, the digital data was converted from binary (base-2) into quaternary (base-4).
CRISPR/Cas is part of the prokaryotic immune system that helps confer resistance to foreign genetic elements and provides a form of acquired immunity. When exposed to exogenous genetic material, Cas proteins will permanently incorporate it into the bacterial genome for future reference. By exploiting this system, scientists have figured out how to easily insert data into and modify genomes (CRISPR/Cas9).
The DNA containing the encoded frames were manufactured and transported into E. coli bacteria where the CRISPR system grabbed the genetic material and inserted it into its own genome. The bacteria was allowed to replicate overnight and then sampled for genetic sequencing. By examining the part of the genome where CRISPR information is stored, the scientists were able to extract and decode the image sequence back into binary digital data. The reconstructed animation can be seen below.
Source: https://goo.gl/PCxHrB (The Verge)
Paper: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature23017 (Nature)
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