Thermo-Responsive Living Microspheroids Enable a Regenerative Living Disk-Drive System for DNA Data Storage.

Abstract

DNA offers exceptional information density and long-term stability, yet its practical deployment is limited by destructive readout and the absence of a reusable, physically addressable architecture that connects nanoscale molecular information with macroscale device-level data organization. Here, we present a regenerative Living Disk-Drive system based on thermo-responsive engineered living memory microspheroids (ELMMs), in which data-encoded bacteria are encapsulated as discrete, file-level living storage units. Each ELMM contains a clonal bacterial population carrying both an information plasmid, which encodes 26 × 26 pixel icon payloads and one- to three-color intracellular fluorescent retrieval indices, and a help plasmid that enables CRISPR-Cas12a/λ-Red rewriting of the data sequence and retrieval tag. A lyophilized ELMM database forms the Living Disk, which is coupled to an Optical Retriever and desktop-scale Living Drive for closed-loop retrieval, regeneration, and database replenishment. Released bacteria regrow for downstream readout or rewriting, while a fraction is re-encapsulated into new ELMMs. The tested system retains retrieval, regrowth, and sequence recovery after four months of ambient dry storage and 13 lyophilization-rehydration cycles. Model-based performance estimates are reported only as theoretical architecture-level bounds. These results establish an experimentally bounded yet extensible architecture for physically manageable and regenerative DNA memory.