Science fiction writers, you have a new inspiration. Researchers have successfully stored data in the DNA of living cells.

After three years and 750 different trials, scientists finally found a method for repeatedly encoding, storing, and erasing the digital information within the DNA, as part of a partnership between Stanford University’s schools of engineering and medicine.

Think of their creation as a bioengineering bit; Graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn explains, ‘If the DNA section points in one direction, it’s a zero. If it points the other way, it’s a one.