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The new method, published in Nature last week, is more efficient, storing 350 bits at a time by encoding strands in parallel. Rather than hand-threading each DNA strand, the team assembles strands from pre-built DNA bricks about 20 nucleotides long, encoding information by altering some and not others along the way. Peking University’s Long Qian and team got the idea for such templates from the way cells share the same basic set of genes but behave differently in response to chemical changes in DNA strands. “Every cell in our bodies has the same genome sequence, but genetic programming comes from modifications to DNA. If life can do this, we can do this,” she says.

Qian and her colleagues encoded data through methylation, a chemical reaction that switches genes on and off by attaching a methyl compound—a small methane-related molecule. Once the bricks are locked into their assigned spots on the strand, researchers select which bricks to methylate, with the presence or absence of the modification standing in for binary values of 0 or 1. The information can then be deciphered using nanopore sequencers to detect whether a brick has been methylated. In theory, the new method is simple enough to be carried out without detailed knowledge of how to manipulate DNA.

The storage capacity of each DNA strand caps off at roughly 70 bits. For larger files, researchers splintered data into multiple strands identified by unique barcodes encoded in the bricks. The strands were then read simultaneously and sequenced according to their barcodes. With this technique, researchers encoded the image of a tiger rubbing from the Han dynasty, troubleshooting the encoding process until the image came back with no errors. The same process worked for more complex images, like a photorealistic print of a panda.

Interpretable language modeling via induction-head ngram models.

Eunji Kim, Sriya Mantena, Weiwei Yang, Chandan Singh, Sungroh Yoon, Jianfeng Gao Microsoft Research 2024 https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.

Large language models (LLMs) have made impressive…

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Can genetic modification appeal to consumers? A new apple will test the market.

Nuclear fission has powered our world and medical advancements for decades, yet some of its secrets have remained elusive.

One of the biggest puzzles? What exactly happens when an atom’s nucleus splits apart at its “neck rupture” point.

Aurel Bulgac, a physics professor at the University of Washington, has been delving into this very question. He and his team set out to simulate the intricate particle dance during this critical moment of fission.

However, for the first time, two dark matter experiments have detected a neutrino fog, a dense cloud of neutrinos. This discovery is reported by researchers from XENON and PandaX — two scientific experiments that aim to detect dark matter, operating independently in Italy and China respectively.

“This is the first measurement of astrophysical neutrinos with a dark matter experiment,” Fei Gao, a scientist involved in the Xenon experiment, said.

Neutrinos are typically detected through coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS), a process in which neutrinos interact with the entire nucleus rather than just a proton or electron.

The inner workings of black holes are more complex than previously thought.

New research suggests black holes are unstable, challenging Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the Kerr solution.

A US bank is warning customers of a security “intrusion” that may have compromised Mastercard account numbers and other financial data.

Maryland-based Eagle Bank says it has received a notice from Mastercard, stating an unnamed US merchant allowed unauthorized access to account information between August 15th, 2023, and May 25th, 2024.

The bank revealed the breach in a filing with the Massachusetts state government.

A study introduces AI2BMD, an artificial intelligence-based dynamics simulation program that uses protein fragmentation with a machine learning force field to accurately and efficiently model the folding and unfolding of large proteins.

Scientists claim that experimental studies of Higgs boson interactions face a fundamental challenge.

Scientists believe that interactions between Higgs bosons could unlock insights into new physics. Discovered at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012, the elusive Higgs boson particle has been at the centre stage for exploring new possibilities in particle physics.

Scientists claimed that the production of Higgs boson pairs can occur within the Standard Model itself. It is such a rare process here that it has not been possible to observe it in the data collected so far.