Friday, November 14, 2014

Bacteria the Future of Hard Drives

Engineers at MIT have transformed the genome of E. coli into a storage device.  To make the E. coli bacteria into a storage device, they had to engineer the cells to produce a recombinase enzyme.  This would allow them to insert DNA (or a sequence of DNA), which would only activate during certain circumstances or input.  After the DNA is activated, the bacteria would pass the information down to each generation allowing for long term memory. 

Timothy Lu, electrical, computer science, and biological engineer, explained the engineered bacteria has the potential to advance medical and environmental sensors. It could potentially detect increased carbon dioxide in the ocean, or detect infections/disease in humans.  This type of information could then expedite medical help; instead of wasting type determining the problem, a doctor could go straight to medical procedures.


The idea of using bacteria as storage devices for information is not new.  In fact using bacteria to store information was attempt in 2001 and 2007 with no success.  In 2010, Chinese Biochemistry students developed a way to use bacteria as a way to store electronic data.  They estimated they could use bacteria as a sort of “bio-hard-disk” to store up 900000 gigabytes, or 450 two terabyte (2000 GB) hard drives.  And because they are bacteria, they can reproduce and ensure the data is store permanently.  This could easily advance biotechnology further than it already has been.


Several  traditional  data storage devices. The one with the largest storage capacity in this group ...

Figure 2 The largest storage device has a capacity of 320MG.  Bacteria has more than 2800 times that.


The fact we have come so far as to be able to use bacteria as storage devices, is nothing short of incredible.  I knew were advancing further and further with bioengineering and biotechnology, but to see and read about its fruition excites me.  The advances we could make in the fields of technology, environmental, and medical sciences is amazing.  The two articles (one for technology and one for medical/environmental) show the scientific community is constantly advancing and working to make a better world.

2 comments:

  1. This discovery is truly exciting. This could lead to storage of significant data that is so large that contemporary technology can not store them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This could be amazing! I know the fear and frustration that comes with computer hard drives, my dad lost a lot of important files when his hard drive died a few years ago and we never got everything back. If this technology could fix that among other problems such as storing huge amounts of data that your typical home PC can't handle as of yet further advances won't be far behind.

    ReplyDelete