One Step Closer To Self-Replication

"This 3D-printed Stanford bunny also holds the data for its own reproduction"

The fabricated Stanford bunny holds about 100 kilobytes of data, thanks to the addition of the DNA-containing nanobeads to the plastic used to 3D print it. "Just like real rabbits, our rabbit also carries its own blueprint," said Grass.

Grass and his colleagues were also able to cut off a piece of the rabbit's ear to retrieve the embedded DNA. Then they used that information to fabricate a second bunny, repeating this process four times, for a total of five fabricated bunnies. The data did degrade a bit with each subsequent generation, but the decoding program can fill in any blanks so that useable data can still be retrieved.