Over the centuries, Dunhuang murals, the paintings on the inner walls of the Mogao Grottoes in China, an UNESCO World Heritage Site have been eroded by wind, sandstorms and human activity.

Fig. 1: Dunhuang murals stored in DNA.

A synthetic biology team at Tianjin University answers the call for mural protection and restoration with DNA-based data storage technology. The team developed a new DNA storage algorithm and successfully stored ten Dunhuang murals in DNA. Accelerated aging experiments verify that the digital information of the murals can be preserved for thousands of years at laboratory temperature, and 20,000 years at 9.4 degrees Celsius.

Fig. 2: Basic concepts of DNA data storage.

DNA data storage is potential due to its high density, long-term durability, and low maintenance cost. However, severe errors, such as strand breaks, that often defeat the traditional recovery schemes, remain a major obstacle for long-term DNA storage. To remove this obtacle, a de novo strand assembly algorithm (DBGPS) using de Bruijn graph and greedy path search is developed. The team has enciphered the Dunhuang murals into 210,000 DNA strands in a 6.8 MB zipped file. The entire 6.8 MB data has been retrieved from a DNA solution that has been incubated at 70 degrees Celsius for 70 days without any particular protection using DBGPS. This technique makes DNA one of the most robust and endurable media for digital information storage that can help protect and pass on cultural heritage.

Fig. 3: De novo assembly-based strand reconstruction for DNA data storage.

This is another breakthrough the team has made after the design and construction a yeast artificial chromosome containing two pictures and a video clip, which were published in the National Science Review in 2021.

By: Cheng Xiaotong

Editor: Qin Mian