Permanent genetic memory with >1-byte capacity
Author(s)
Yang, Lei; Fernandez-Rodriguez, Jesus; Nielsen, Alec Andrew; Voigt, Christopher A.; McClune, Conor James; Lu, Timothy K; Laub, Michael T; ... Show more Show less
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Genetic memory enables the recording of information in the DNA of living cells. Memory can record a transient environmental signal or cell state that is then recalled at a later time. Permanent memory is implemented using irreversible recombinases that invert the orientation of a unit of DNA, corresponding to the [0,1] state of a bit. To expand the memory capacity, we have applied bioinformatics to identify 34 phage integrases (and their cognate attB and attP recognition sites), from which we build 11 memory switches that are perfectly orthogonal to each other and the FimE and HbiF bacterial invertases. Using these switches, a memory array is constructed in Escherichia coli that can record 1.375 bytes of information. It is demonstrated that the recombinases can be layered and used to permanently record the transient state of a transcriptional logic gate.
Date issued
2014-10Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Synthetic Biology CenterJournal
Nature Methods
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Yang, Lei, Alec A K Nielsen, Jesus Fernandez-Rodriguez, Conor J McClune, Michael T Laub, Timothy K Lu, and Christopher A Voigt. “Permanent Genetic Memory with >1-Byte Capacity.” Nature Methods 11, no. 12 (October 26, 2014): 1261–1266.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
1548-7091
1548-7105