The future of digital memory may be inside a small plastic bunny that contains 3-D printing instructions for replicating itself stored in artificial DNA, said scientists Monday, who announced a method for mixing genetically encoded data into common manufacturing materials.

The scientists sealed the DNA data inside thousands of microscopic glass beads that protected the information as the plastic for the toy was heated and processed. By sequencing a snippet of the toy’s DNA-infused plastic, they could extract the instructions and make flawless copies of the figure, they said. They reported the experiment in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

While cumbersome compared with conventional computer hard drives or tapes, the new DNA data-storage technique one day could be used to store digital information in items molded into virtually any shape, the scientists said. It could, for example, be used to make devices that contain their own blueprints or to embed electronic health records in medical implants and prescription drugs, they said.

“We wanted to show that you can use this technology to hide information in common objects,” said computational genomics researcher Yaniv Erlich, a co-author of the study who is chief science officer at a consumer genetics genealogy company called MyHeritage. The company wasn’t involved in the project.

The quest to harness DNA code, which nature evolved over billions of years to store and duplicate biological information, has become a fast-moving research field that combines molecular biology and nanotechnology, as consumers, engineers and scientists seek ways to handle tsunamis of data.