R&D: Magnetic Microsphere/Silica Nanoparticle Composite Structures for Switchable DNA Storage

ACS Applied Nano Materials has published an article written by Jing-Yuan Ma,Kai-Xuan Wang, Ming Ma, and Yu Zhang, State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Biomaterials and Devices, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering & Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Southeast University, Nanjing210096, P. R. China.

Abstract: “As an emerging storage medium, DNA is a crucial carrier for future data storage. DNA has a better storage density and a longer storage life than conventional storage media. However, DNA’s key limitations as a storage medium are the precision of information reading and storage stability. Herein, we designed and successfully developed a switchable DNA storage nanocomposite structure (MM-DNA/DNA’-SiO2). The composite structure employs magnetic microspheres (MMs) based on Fe3O4 nanoparticles as the DNA carrier for storing information (MM-DNA) and silicon dioxide nanoparticles modified with complementary strands as the protective outer layer (DNA’-SiO2), and its switchability and DNA sequence reading accuracy were both validated in this study. This method provides a novel nanostructure medium and technical proposal for efficient DNA storage with potential application value.“