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Using Bacterial DNA For Data Storage

Posted by timothy on from the hard-to-repudiate dept.

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.

4 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh, perhaps not. by smoondog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (one of the modified bacteria can tolerate 1000X more radiation than a human being).

    I haven't read the article (don't have access to where I am) nor have I thought about this subject much, but one question I have is how the authors keep the sequences under selective pressure. DNA sequences are only conserved over many years if evolution needs them. Non-coding regions (So called "junk-DNA", poor choice of words, btw) would easily mutate into other sequences. One could imagine sequencing many cells, and infer the original sequence, but this gets more expensive as time goes on (as the number of sequences you need to sequence goes up).

    -Sean

  2. There is a kind of bactera by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That keeps four copies of it's DNA in rings and error checks constantly. They're probably using one of these, as it happens to be very radiation resistant, I'm guessing they used these, and so the mutation rate would be very, very low. So it wouldn't keep forever, but would for a very long time.

    You could also put error checking (parity, checksums, etc) so once you found some bactera you could check to make sure they had the right version and not a mutation

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    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  3. Re:Of course its junk DNA... by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To be entirely fair, they were using a brute force mechanism and dealing with a changing, hostile environment. We can use a controlled environment.

    Yet I don't see this hitting the market in the next ten years.

    I remember about eight years ago an article about how the future of storage was going to be in a frozen solid containing bacteria that change shape when a certain intensity of light hits them -- two lasers, each with half the requisite amount of light, would shine in to cause the bacteria to change shape where they met. Terrabytes in a little cube. Never happened.

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    May we never see th
  4. Reminds of that STTNG Episode by cosmosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reminds me of that Star Trek episode The Chase, in which Dr. Galen, Captain Picards old Archaeology professor, found genetic data-blocks from various species around the galaxy stored in the junk portion of each species DNA, including our own. When a sufficient number of these data blocks were put together it completed a stellar map, identifying the precise location of the original origin of life on out planet and countless others. The jury is still out on the Panspermia Theory, but my own hunch is that there is lots of intelligence out there vastly older and greater than we are.

    Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

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    www.enthea.org