Bacteria turns into a storage device

A new DNA-based recorder allows bioengineers to create cell cultures that detect information in their environment and store it for later use. Such ‘designer’ cells might in the future be used to monitor water quality in a village, or measure the amount of sugar a person eats. DNA provides a very stable form of memory and will allow us to do more complex computing tasks. A team started working on SCRIBE three years ago as an attempt to improve gene editing, in which cells are coaxed to incorporate new information into their genomes. One straightforward approach involves using single-stranded DNA molecules.The natural biological function of these retrons remains mysterious, but Farzadfard and Lu realized that they could reprogram them to produce the single-stranded DNA encoding the information they wanted, and use the viral enzyme to store it in a bacterial genome. SCRIBE could work as an ‘analog’ form of memory that functions more like a dimmer switch. The memory is not contained in a single E. coli cell, but in the entire culture.Distributing memory across this population becomes a powerful way of doing things.