Scientists at MIT have developed an amber-like polymer that could be used to one day preserve DNA and even digital data such as photos. They successfully used the polymer to store DNA sequences by encoding the Jurassic Park theme music, as well as an entire human genome.
Technically speaking, the material consists of a degradable thermoset, which boasts polymers that form a solid when heated. It also includes cleavable links that can be easily broken, allowing the polymer to be degraded in a controlled way. This project involved making their thermoset polymer from styrene and a cross-linker, which together form an amber-like thermoset called cross-linked polystyrene. Since styrene is hydrophobic, the team needed to find a way to entice DNA — a hydrophilic, negatively charged molecule — into the styrene. Achieving this meant identifying a combination of three monomers that they could turn into polymers that dissolve DNA by helping it interact with styrene, a method called T-REX (Thermoset-REinforced Xeropreservation). These polymers enabled them to encapsulate DNA of varying length, from tens of nucleotides up to an entire human genome (more than 50,000 base pairs).
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Freezing DNA is the number one way to preserve it, but it’s very expensive, and it’s not scalable. I think our new preservation method is going to be a technology that may drive the future of storing digital information on DNA,” said James Banal, a former MIT postdoc.
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