Photons are natural carriers of quantum information over long distances. Matter systems have good storage capabilities and processing qubits. However, it is challenging to integrate all these capabilities into one system. The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect center in diamond does show significant potential for realizing solid-state quantum networks. The NV center provides a hybrid spin system in which electron spins are used for fast, high-fidelity control and readout, In addition its nuclear spins are well-isolated from their environment yielding ultra-long coherence time. Electron and nuclear spins could form a small-scale quantum register. A so far missing link is to store quantum information from a light field into the defects spins in such a way that scalable quantum repeater networks is possible. We demonstrate [1] a new scheme based on the interaction of an optical photon and a hybrid electron-nuclear spin system. The storage process is achieved by coherently transferring a single photon to an entangled electron-nuclear spin state of a nitrogen vacancy center in diamond. The process resembles a photon-nuclear spin.