Object Engineered to Carry a DNA Code for its Own Replication

A 3-D printed rabbit is made from a blueprint stored in DNA, which itself is stored in a printed rabbit.

Written byKerry Grens

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ABOVE: The 3-D printed rabbit
ETH ZURISH / JULIAN KOCH

Scientists have composed DNA to carry the instructions for 3-D printing a plastic rabbit. It’s an impressive feat on its own, but they have taken the idea of DNA storage a step further by embedding silica beads with that genetic blueprint into the bunny. The researchers then recreated five generations of the rabbit by using a sample of DNA from each iteration to print a new rabbit with high fidelity.

“The creativity of this embryonic field [of using synthetic DNA to store information] just keeps getting better,” George Church of Harvard University who was not involved in the work tells New Scientist.

Geneticist Yaniv Erlich, who is now the chief scientific officer of MyHeritage, and the lab of Robert Grass, a chemical engineer at ETH Zurich, teamed up to develop the bunny. The printing instructions are stored in 45 kb of ...

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Meet the Author

Kerry Grens
Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.
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