Researchers have found a new way to keep records of when a cell’s genes turn on and off—by harnessing systems that bacteria already use for self-defense.
DNA is a good storage medium for something like a receipt because, unlike RNA, which degrades faster, it is stable over long periods of time. “It’s compact, it’s flexible, it’s got a nice code we can work with, it’s stable,” says Shipman. “It’s not something that you ever have to worry about falling apart, even over really long timescales.”
In order to match each gene to the right barcode, the scientists placed the retron under control of the promoter from the gene they were interested in tracking. That way every time the gene was expressed, the retron was also activated to generate the noncoding RNA sequence with its barcode marker. Then, the retron would reverse transcribe the RNA sequence, including the gene-specific barcode.
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