Information about (computer) data being stored in DNA
lexipixel
2:20 am on Jan 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
Squillions of bytes in one cup of DNA In his demonstration, Birney and fellow-researcher Nick Goldman, both of the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, called on Agilent Technologies to help them a variety of content onto manufactured DNA: a jpg photo of the EMBL-EBI, a PDF of the Watson and Crick paper that first described DNA, a txt file containing all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and an mp3 of Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech.
All of this went onto manufactured DNA strings "as big as a speck of dust"
Sounds interesting, but I wonder what the read/write speeds are. I might be wrong, but I would assume access speed is more critical that physical size at the moment, but I guess that will change at some point.
Good groundwork for the future, I guess, but it'll probably be years and years before we get anything practical out of this. But it's got to start somewhere!
Shaddows
10:34 am on Jan 24, 2013 (gmt 0)
But Mum! I wasn't having sex, I was filesharing.
lexipixel
6:21 am on Jan 25, 2013 (gmt 0)
Since the body has a low voltage electrical charge, and many methods for I/O, we might as well start storing data in the unused 90% of our brians "they" always talk about.
It would make the most sense -- unused grey matter's DNS encoded with data -- one synapse away from the central processor.
Maybe you could even get injected with knowledge -- some enzyme or amino acid solution infused with data that binds to neurons.
ok, I'll admit -- I've just watched about 50 episodes of The Twilight Zone on HULU over the past week or two... so, I'm thinking nothing is too far fetched.
