A dynamic, ultra-stable, random-access RNA retrieval database

ongoing

In order for DNA to become the information storage medium that serves as an alternative to existing digital storage solution technologies information must be stored stably in it with the means to repeatedly access and manipulate parts of the stored data. Only few in vitro approaches are capable to address some of these requirements, while in vivo approaches still produce largely static data storage libraries, which limits the real-life applicability of these technologies. In this proposal we present a new, regeneratable solid state storage system consisting of beads, where information, encoded in single stranded DNA strands, can be added, selectively accessed and removed using enzymes and nucleic acid strands as inputs for the different data operations in isothermal reactions with no loss of material. To achieve this a strand architecture is proposed, where unique Data ID sequences are used on the targeted data strands for performing the intended data operations via enzymatic reactions: addition, deletion of data and transcription-based data access. Furthermore, a variant of this system is proposed that uses RNA molecules for the selective access of the data strands, which we aim to implement in a bacterial data storage system as well where RNA encoding bacteriophages will be used as a non-invasive way to introduce inputs for the data operations, such as random data access and removal. Finally, we present the use of damage suppressor proteins from extremotolerant organisms complementing the in vitro and in vivo system to provide the long-term stability of DNA observed in resilient biological systems.