Using Bacterial DNA For Data Storage

NPV writes "January ACM Communications has an article on the use of DNA in genetically modified bacteria to store information. This is an attempt to achieve the ultimate in archival storage (one of the modified bacteria can tolerate 1000X more radiation than a human being). Now just suppose that the "junk DNA" in the human genome is the documentation package for the machine code. Who wrote that manual?" Here's the article abstract.

Comments

Re:Of course its junk DNA...

[zatz]

I am amazed that you can post on Slashdot at a default of +2 with your broken English and Luddite views.

Domestication has, on the whole, been *extremely* pleasant for us. Occasionally we get a plague from an animal species that way, yes. We've also managed to do such amazing things as grow food so efficiently that we can support a large and sedentary (vs nomadic) population almost anywhere on Earth, and give them lots of leisure time to display their ignorance by commenting on Slashdot.

Also, the "junk DNA" remark you are criticizing was from the submitter. Maybe the article suggested somehow adding more chromosomes rather than replacing apparently unused regions. Either way, it sounded like primarily a thought experiment, so you can relax. Perhaps after you eschew modern medicine and die at 30, we will encode your sad story into some bacterial DNA for the edification of future generations.

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