R&D: Photon-Directed Multiplexed Enzymatic DNA Synthesis for Molecular Digital Storage

Nature Communications has published an article written by Howon Lee, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, Daniel J. Wiegand, Kettner Griswold, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA, and Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA, Sukanya Punthambaker, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA, 02115, USA,Honggu Chun, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Korea University, 466 Hana Science Hall, 145 Anamro, Seongbukgu, 02841, Seoul, South Korea, Richie E. Kohman, and George M. Church, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.

Abstract: “New storage technologies are needed to keep up with the global demands of data generation. DNA is an ideal storage medium due to its stability, information density and ease-of-readout with advanced sequencing techniques. However, progress in writing DNA is stifled by the continued reliance on chemical synthesis methods. The enzymatic synthesis of DNA is a promising alternative, but thus far has not been well demonstrated in a parallelized manner. Here, we report a multiplexed enzymatic DNA synthesis method using maskless photolithography. Rapid uncaging of Co²⁺ ions by patterned UV light activates Terminal deoxynucleotidyl Transferase (TdT) for spatially-selective synthesis on an array surface. Spontaneous quenching of reactions by the diffusion of excess caging molecules confines synthesis to light patterns and controls the extension length. We show that our multiplexed synthesis method can be used to store digital data by encoding 12 unique DNA oligonucleotide sequences with video game music, which is equivalent to 84 trits or 110 bits of data.“