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Burn your genes on CD -- for $500,000
An anonymous reader writes "Venter says he plans to offer the service, with the goal of burning individual human's entire DNA sequences onto shiny compact discs.
It will cost about $500,000 per person, says the entrepreneurial scientist who helped decode the human genome. "
This is the sort of thing I'd like to see put on a satalite flying through space, for possible future contact with intelligent species. Then they would have a good chance to study other lifeforms, even if we are long gone.
I think one would need reference info to put the code to use. It is kind of like having the machine code of an app without knowing the machine language.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually it's pretty unlikely, I would guess. It depends strongly upon how the brain has been preserved - if it's in a strong formalin solution then the DNA is largely unrecoverable. There are methods for getting some DNA out of formalin-fixed tissue, but it wouldn't be an easy job.
I don't think the information would be a lot of use anyway until a LOT more is understood about brain development, and that's still assuming that whatever made Einstein's brain so brilliant was completely genetic in anyway. In utero environmental factors and probably lots of other factors we don't even know about yet might play a role. Make a complete DNA copy of Albert and you might just end up with an unusually bright kid, but not a world-class genius.