EXPLOITING GENOME INTELLIGENCE FOR I.T. PURPOSES

The exponential development and connectivity of our smart devices is transforming positively our society but in the same time creates a number of challenges regarding storage and encryption of the unprecedented amount of data produced every day.

At first sight, digital data storage and computing seems to be rather an information technology task, and involvement of genomicists could be regarded rather as a paradox. However, recent studies have pointed out the potential of storing digital information into a universally readable and immutable storage medium, synthetic DNA molecules, at a rate of 455 exabytes in just 1 gram of single stranded DNA. Although efficient this approach requires the synthesis of a large number of synthetic DNA molecules rendering it financially non viable and does not exploit the inherent encoding potential of the genome but rather copies concepts of electronics into synthetic DNA molecules and devices.

Our approach on the other hand aims to leverage the already existing “logic devices” within the cells, in this case the non-protein coding elements of our genome. Instead of encoding and writing the digitized information into synthetic DNA molecules, our lab implements the encoding of this information in our genomes themselves.