The ambition of rebirth

Inspired by the "forbidden fruit" that tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, an American researcher wanted to create his own legendary apple version, using the online encyclopedia that opened Wikipedia.

Joe Davis, 63, a biologist from the George Church genetic lab at Harvard Medical School, has devised a math formula to augment the data layers for DNA. He now plans to add an encrypted version of the online encyclopedia to the DNA of a 4,000-year-old apple variety, to get the same fruit as the "forbidden fruit" in the most biblical legend.

According to biblical legend, Adam and Eve have eaten "understanding good and evil" in the Garden of Eden, despite God's commandments.As a result, they lost their innocence, started away from God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden.(Artwork: Word Press)

Mr. Davis named the recreating apple Malus ecclesia . In Latin, Malus means "evil apple tree" , while ecclesia refers to the church, both religious and representative of his laboratory name.

In partnership with scientists and mathematicians Dana Boyle and Madeline Prye-Ball, Mr. Davis spent many years researching to find an age-appropriate apple for the project. By the end of last year, he was sent to the roots and leaves of a 4,000-year-old apple variety.

At the 30c3 seminar in Germany in December 2013, Mr. Davis once stated: "I can't stop thinking about mathematics and DNA. I found a way to not only put a class, but a lot of layers into one. "The gene, like the Babushka dolls. Each DNA molecule will contain three pages of information. This is because DNA can be described in three unique digits."

Mr. Davis also revealed his desire to "create a fruit that can tempt the devil".

Due to the huge size of Wikipedia, Mr. Davis and his colleagues only chose to encode the first 50,000 pages of the online encyclopedia, which accounts for 50% of the total number of pages visited the most throughout this website. The amount of data used is equivalent to 350MB.

Mr. Davis is promoting an online encyclopedia encoded project to include the modern "forbidden fruit" DNA.(Photo: Corbis)

The New Yorker newspaper quoted Davis as saying the apple genome is like a 750-million-word book, consisting of only four DNA-encoded letters, A, T, C and G (the abbreviation of four structural nucleotides). into DNA). The words are translated into these letters of DNA by a mathematical code, similar to the way Morse encoding (using telegraph communication) and the shorthand rule squeezing the word into a single sign. .

Once encoded, these letters are placed inside the apple thanks to the evolving bacteria, to insert its genome through the cell wall. By putting information into the holes of DNA, Mr. Davis believes that this process will not affect the taste and texture of the apple.

The first project, using Mr. Davis's similar technique, was to bring the Greek philosopher Heraclitus's works into the genes of a fly. In the new project, the apple of Malus ecclesia is also known as a "forbidden fruit" , because the eating of genetically modified plants in the United States is under strict scrutiny by the Ministry of Agriculture.