Project Grant 2227526

This $375,000 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Computing and Communication Foundations, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070), will support the development of hybrid cell-semiconducting polymer systems for high-density biological data storage at William Marsh Rice University. Over the two-year period from August 2022 to July 2025, the university researchers will work to encode 100 bytes of information into synthetic RNA and redox-active small molecules within cells. This stored biological data will then be read non-disruptively from outside the cells using semiconducting polymers. The goals are to demonstrate random-access memory capabilities in living cells through repetitive write-read-erase cycles at the 100-byte scale, while minimizing impacts on cell viability. The project also aims to establish the portability of the memory elements across different microbial chassis, with Escherichia coli used for initial proof-of-concept. If successful, this research could establish a foundation for sustainable, high-density biological data storage applications.