2024-09-15 21:19:35
- DNA “software” and “hardware” breakthrough made by a team of two American universities, led by Orlin Velev
- It was demonstrated how the technology solves sudoku and chess problems
- Velev graduated from Sofia University, has been in the US for 28 years, and his son is an engineer on SpaceX’s Starship rocket team
Human DNA is microscopic in size, but in the human body it contains more data than even the most sophisticated microchips in computers and smartphones.
Is it possible to make it work with PC features then? It sounds like science fiction, but in the authoritative scientific publications “Nature”, Chemical&Engineering News and Science Friday there was an announcement of progress that could open the door in this direction. The discovery was also reported by many major world media, including “24 Chasa”.
The ultimate goal is to repeatedly store, retrieve, calculate, delete, or overwrite the data that DNA uses. A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins University is working in this direction. One of the two senior leaders of the team is Bulgarian – Prof. Orlin Velev.
He is a distinguished professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University and works on innovative topics such as nanotechnology, nanomaterials, and microrobotics.
Thus, all the information accumulated during the development of human civilization,
can be collected in volume the size of a shoebox
Prof. Orlin Velev gives an example. You could put the data of a thousand laptops into a DNA-based storage the size of a pencil eraser, says Albert Kyeong, the project’s other senior leader.
“This is a large interdisciplinary scientific project – explains Prof. Orlin Velev. – Colleague Kyong and I are combining his research in DNA informatics with our developments in new materials.”
The technology has the potential to store vast amounts of data for thousands of years. The system can also process data. This has been demonstrated by solving sudoko and chess problems.
The main problem that has been solved is that DNA is a rather fragile molecule when it is outside a living cell – it is difficult to manipulate and write information on it. This is precisely where the contribution of the scientific team led by Prof. Velev is made. He has developed a soft polymer material that acts as a matrix to which DNA can be attached, stabilized and manipulated by a magnetic field. “So to speak, colleague Kyong develops the “software” of DNA informatics, and we provide the “hardware” so that DNA can be protected and manipulated,” says Orlin Velev.
The new material is called a dendricolloid and
can save information much better from the “naked” DNA
and withstand more than 170 dehydration/rehydration cycles.
All of this could open the door not only to writing and reading DNA data, but also to future DNA computers and data banks of unlimited size.
Orlin Velev is 60 years old. He graduated from Rousse English High School and then from Sofia University in 1989. He defended his thesis in 1996. He specialized in Japan, and then he and his wife Anka moved to the USA. There he first worked at the University of Delaware, and from 2001 he established his research group at North Carolina State University.
He initiated a pioneering program in colloidal nanoengineering and nanomaterials. The Bulgarian is the author of over 240 publications that have been cited more than 32,000 times.
He pioneered techniques to create new materials from nanoparticles, specially shaped particles, photonic crystals and nanomaterials that are biodegradable.
Prof. Velev explains that one of the most engaging and very important aspects of being a professor in the States is to be a good teacher, supervisor, and mentor to PhD students and young scientists from all over the world. The 38 PhD students and 23 postdoctoral fellows who graduated in his group work as researchers in companies and institutes. Some are already professors in the USA, Great Britain, France, Korea, India and Canada, a
others work in startups in Silicon Valley
Although Prof. Velev continues his career in the USA to develop new fields as an independent scientist, he maintains connections and collaborations with colleagues from his alma mater – the Chemistry Faculty of Sofia University. Last fall, he spent his academic leave (sabbatical) as a visiting professor at the Faculty of Chemistry in collaboration with Prof. Tony Spasov’s SUMMIT project for new materials. Velev also works on projects with a Bulgarian startup company. The professor says that he is very happy to see how not only science in Bulgaria maintains its high world level, but also
many young Bulgarians are highly motivated to do science
and science entrepreneurship.
Orlin’s wife – Anka Veleva, runs a start-up company for new plant protection products based on ecologically safe particles of natural materials.
Proof of the strong engineering gene is that the 29-year-old son of Orlin and Anka – Orlin Velev Jr., leads one of the teams of engineers working on the 120-meter Starship spacecraft of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. He joined the company after graduating from GeorgiaTech University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was on the team that worked on the Dragon spacecraft that continues to put astronauts into orbit around Earth. Orlin Jr. spends most of his time in Los Angeles, but he also has to make frequent visits to the space company’s new base in Boca Chica, Texas.