It is now probable to keep the digital instructions for additive manufacturing a daily object into the same object. This is similar to how DNA keeps the code of life. Scientists have shown this new DNA things through the fabrication of a 3D printed style of the Stanford rabbit. This is a simple experiment print in 3D computer graphics that kept the printing guidelines to reproduce the rabbit.
DNA features four chemical building blocks. They include guanine, cytosine, thymine, and adenine. The blocks comprise a type of code to a base four code and allowing it one of the four letters. This is what Ars’ John Timmer said previously:
“Once a bit of data is translated, it’s chopped up into smaller pieces (usually 100 to 150 bases long) and inserted in between ends that make it easier to copy and sequence. These ends also contain some information where the data resides in the overall storage scheme—i.e., these are bytes 197 to 300.
To restore the data, all the DNA has to be sequenced, the locational information read, and the DNA sequence decoded. In fact, the DNA needs to be sequenced several times over, since there are errors and a degree of randomness involved in how often any fragment will end up being sequenced.”
DNA has notably higher data density as compared to traditional storage mechanisms. One gram can serve almost 1bn terabytes (1 zettabyte) of data. Also, it’s a sturdy medium: the saved data can be stored for an extended period of time or decades, or even centuries.
However, utilizing DNA for data accommodation also gives some grand challenges. For example, storing retrieving data from DNA normally takes a notable amount of time, with all the needed sequencing.
The capability to synthesize DNA is still far from becoming a practical data storage medium.
This recent breakthrough is a step closer to that objective. Many years ago, co-author Robert Grass of ETH Zurich created a technique for labeling products with a DNA “barcode”. This is embedded in minuscule glass “nanobeads”, a technology now being advertised by a spinoff firm.
That is among the main growth that allowed this recent strategy. The other is a technique for preserving over 250,000 terabytes of data in a gram of DNA. It was formed by co-author Yaniv Erlich, chief science officer at MyHeritage, a DNA-based genealogy firm.
“All other known forms of storage have a fixed geometry: a hard drive has to look like a hard drive, a CD like a CD. You can’t change the form without losing information,” Erlich said. “DNA is currently the only data storage medium that can also exist as a liquid, which allows us to insert it into objects of any shape.”
The fabricated Stanford rabbit keeps around 100 kilobytes of data, owing to the inclusion of the DNA-containing nanobeads to the plastic utilized to 3D print it. “Just like real rabbits, our rabbit also carries its own blueprint,” stated Grass.
