British scientists have stored DNA information for an entire human on a crystal, which could be used to bring back humanity if we become extinct.
The team from the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) used lasers to inscribe the data on a 5D crystal, which they said can survive for billions of years.
Unlike other storage formats, it does not degrade over time.
In a statement, the university described the crystal – equivalent to fused quartz – as one of the most “chemically and thermally durable materials on Earth”.
It can withstand massive forces, extreme temperatures and “exposure to cosmic radiation”.
The team at Southampton, led by Professor Peter Kazansky, used ultra-fast lasers to imprint data about the human genome – representing the entire set of DNA instructions found in a cell.
A spokesman for the university said: “Unlike marking only on the surface of a 2D piece of paper or magnetic tape, this method of encoding uses two optical dimensions and three spatial co-ordinates to write throughout the material – hence the ‘5D’ in its name.”
The team hope it could be used in the future to record the genomes of endangered plant and animal species which are faced with extinction.
But there is a catch.
It is not currently possible to synthetically create humans, plants and animals using genetic information alone.
Prof Kazansky said the longevity of the 5D crystal meant the information would be available if DNA advances were ever made.
He said: “We know from the work of others that genetic material of simple organisms can be synthesised and used in an existing cell to create a viable living specimen in a lab.
“The 5D memory crystal opens up possibilities for other researchers to build an everlasting repository of genomic information from which complex organisms like plants and animals might be restored should science in the future allow.”
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The crystal includes a visual key to show details about what data is stored inside and how it could be used by a future intelligence – species or machine – to create a human.
The key shows the universal elements (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen); the four bases of the DNA molecule (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) with their molecular structure; their placement in the double helix structure of DNA; and how genes position into a chromosome, which can then be inserted into a cell.
The crystal has been stored in the Memory of Mankind archive – a special time capsule within a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria.
5D memory crystals can store up to 360 terabytes of information, and the format was awarded the Guinness World Record for the most durable data storage material in 2014.