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The potential of DNA as an information storage medium is rapidly growing due to advances in DNA synthesis and sequencing. However, the chemical stability of DNA challenges the complete erasure of information encoded in DNA sequences. Here, we encode information in a DNA information solution, a mixture of true message- and false message-encoded oligonucleotides, and enables rapid and permanent erasure of information. True messages are differentiated by their hybridization to a "truth marker” oligonucleotide, and only true messages can be read; binding of the truth marker can be effectively randomized even with a brief exposure to the elevated temperature. We show 8 separate bitmap images can be stably encoded and read after storage at 25 °C for 65 days with an average of over 99% correct information recall, which extrapolates to a half-life of over 15 years at 25 °C. Heating to 95 °C for 5 minutes, however, permanently erases the message., The chemical stability of DNA makes complete erasure of DNA-encoded data difficult. Here the authors mix true and false messages, differentiated by whether a truth marker oligo is bound to it, and show that brief exposure to elevated temperatures randomizes the binding of truth markers preventing data recovery.

Accurate DNA sequencing is crucial in biomedicine. Underlying the most accurate methods is the assumption that a mutation is true if altered bases are present on both strands of the DNA duplex. We now show that this assumption can be wrong. We establish that current methods to prepare DNA for sequencing, via ‘End Repair/dA-Tailing,’ may substantially resynthesize strands, leading amplifiable lesions or alterations on one strand to become indiscernible from true mutations on both strands. Indeed, we discovered that 7-17% and 32-57% of interior ‘duplex base pairs’ from cell-free DNA and formalin-fixed tumor biopsies, respectively, could be resynthesized in vitro and potentially introduce false mutations. To address this, we present Duplex-Repair, and show that it limits interior duplex base pair resynthesis by 8- to 464-fold, rescues the impact of induced DNA damage, and affords up to 8.9-fold more accurate duplex sequencing. Our study uncovers a major Achilles’ heel in sequencing and offers a solution to restore high accuracy.

Understanding the thermodynamics of DNA motifs is important for prediction and design of probes and primers, but melt curve analyses are low-throughput and produce inaccurate results for motifs such as bulges and mismatches. Here, we developed a new, accurate and high-throughput method for measuring DNA motif thermodynamics called TEEM (Toehold Exchange Energy Measurement). It is a refined framework of comparing two toehold exchange reactions, which are competitive strand displacement between oligonucleotides. In a single experiment, TEEM can measure over 1000 ΔG° values with standard error of roughly 0.05 kcal/mol.

A major problem of long-chain fatty acid (LCFA) hydroxylation using Escherichia coli is that FadD (long-chain fatty acyl-CoA synthetase), which is necessary for exogenous LCFA transport, also initiates cellular consumption of LCFA. In this study, an effective method to prevent the cellular consumption of LCFA without impairing its transport is proposed. The main idea is that a heterologous enzyme which consumes LCFA can replace FadD in LCFA transport. For the model heterologous enzyme, CYP153A from Marinobacter aquaeolei, which converts palmitic acid into ω-hydroxy palmitic acid, was expressed in E. coli. When fadD was deleted from an E. coli strain, CYP153A indeed maintained the ability to transport LCFA. A disadvantage of fadD deletion mutant is the fact that FadD deficiency downregulates the transcription of fadL (outer membrane LCFA transporter) via FadR (fatty acid metabolism regulator protein), was solved by fadL overexpression from a plasmid. In addition, the overexpression of fadL was able to offset catabolite repression on fadL, allowing glucose to be used as the primary carbon source. In conclusion, the strain with fadD deletion and fadL overexpression showed 5.5-fold increase in productivity compared to the wild-type strain, converting 2.6 g/L (10.0 mM) of palmitic acid into 2.4 g/L (8.8 mM) of ω-hydroxy palmitic acid in a shake flask. This simple genetic manipulation can be applied to any LCFA hydroxylation using E. coli.

DNA hybridization thermodynamics is critical for accurate design of oligonucleotides for biotechnology and nanotechnology applications, but parameters currently in use are inaccurately extrapolated based on limited quantitative understanding of thermal behaviours. Here, we present a method to measure the ΔG° of DNA motifs at temperatures and buffer conditions of interest, with significantly better accuracy (6- to 14-fold lower s.e.) than prior methods. The equilibrium constant of a reaction with thermodynamics closely approximating that of a desired motif is numerically calculated from directly observed reactant and product equilibrium concentrations; a DNA catalyst is designed to accelerate equilibration. We measured the ΔG° of terminal fluorophores, single-nucleotide dangles and multinucleotide dangles, in temperatures ranging from 10 to 45 °C., DNA hybridisation thermodynamics parameters underlie rational design of oligonucleotides for diagnostics and nanotechnology. Here, the authors present an accurate method to measure the free energy of a given DNA structure at specific temperature and buffer conditions.