Colored nano-lights are coming to decorate DNA sequences decorate DNA sequences and improve digital data storage. This is the goal of the new DNA-Fairylights research project coordinated by the Italian Institute of Technology and which was financed by the European Union with around 3 million for the next 3 years. The IIT points out that archiving digital data using DNA is an innovative technique that scientists are studying to have efficient and low-cost alternatives for data archiving in the future. The Dna-Fairylights project, funded by the European Union, aims to combine this bio-inspired technology together with the science of nanomaterials, through the decoration of DNA sequences with real colored nano-lights: the technique will allow for faster data reading and writing processes and new coding approaches.
The project is coordinated by Roman Krahne and Denis Garoli, respectively Principal Investigator and Senior Researcher of the Optoelectronics group of the Italian Institute of Technology (Iit) of Genoa, and involves an interdisciplinary team of high-level researchers from Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Dna-Fairylights is supported by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 framework program, with funding of 3.1 million euros for the next 3 years. Scientists explain that modern society produces more and more data, in continuous and dizzying rise.
Digital data, the researchers point out, is stored in the form of bits as a series of ones and zeros, and each individual generates several billion such bits that must be stored on devices such as cell phones, smart watches, computers, tablets.. To promote a more environmentally sustainable society, it is essential to develop data storage technologies that are intelligent, compact and energy efficient, without polluting. Nature offers a very effective solution of inspiration for scientists: DNA, in which the information that defines the structure and function of our organism is encoded in unique sequences of four bases (A, T, C, G). “Using DNA molecules as carriers of information within modern technologies – continue the researchers – would allow unprecedented storage density, long-term stability and low manufacturing costs. However, – they observe – these techniques present some obstacles to to overcome: the reading of the DNA sequence is currently slow, the inability of rapid reconfiguration that would be the basis of the reading / writing processes, and the costly fabrication from scratch, through enzymatic synthesis, of the desired DNA sequence “.
The DNA-Fairylights project aims to overcome these obstacles, leading to a higher level of innovation
the storage of digital data through DNA, extending the binary concept of zero / one to the broader one of the color spectrum, where different colors, integrated in a DNA sequence, can encode information in a more compact and efficient way.
The basic idea of the scientists is to decorate the stretches of DNA with a series of nanoparticles of different colors, so that optical technologies can read the sequence of information, faster than electrical ones and also more energy efficient, as they dissipate much less heat. Researchers will exploit the unique ability to recognize individual DNA strands ‘with colors’ both to define the sequence, i.e. to encode the data, and to reconfigure the sequence, i.e. modify and rewrite the contained data. The project aims to develop new nanomaterials for optical coding, new algorithms for storing data beyond the zero / one binary level, innovative reading devices and, finally, resources for the companies of the near future. The Dna-Fairylights consortium is made up of the Italian Institute of Technology (as coordinator, Genoa), Cic biomaGune (Spain), Dnascript (France), University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), Elements (Italy), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule of Zurich (Switzerland), Technische Universität of Munich (Germany), Universität Stuttgart (Germany), Ab Analitica (Italy).