You might call it the smallest movie ever made.
This week, a team of scientists report that they have successfully embedded a short film into the DNA of living bacteria cells.
The mini-movie, really a GIF, is a five-frame animation of a galloping thoroughbred mare named Annie G. The images were taken by the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the late 1800s for his photo series titled “Human and Animal Locomotion.”
“The horse was one of the first examples of a moving image and very recognizable,” said Seth Shipman, a postdoctoral fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School who led the work. “We liked that about it, but we didn’t spend a ton of time thinking about it. We weren’t sure how the research would go.”
You can read more, and see the video here: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-dna-movie-20170712-story.html