DNA For Information Processing and Data Storage

Haydn Fenton writes "Here is an article on using DNA for data storage and even information processing. From the article, "The DNA molecule - nature's premier data storage material - may hold the key for the information technology industry as it faces demands for more compact data processing and storage circuitry. A team led by Richard Kiehl, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota, has used DNA's ability to assemble itself into predetermined patterns to construct a synthetic DNA scaffolding with regular, closely spaced docking sites that can direct the assembly of circuits for processing or storing data.""

Comments

base 5 computing?

[Chillybott]

seems to me that this would be the big benefit, that rather than base 2 for data storage, you could use base 5, with each slot value as 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 based on having no protien, a, g, t, or c in the "slot" - giving a larger number of values (and therefpre addresses) per slot

(base 5, would the 'slots' be called "quints" - not sure)

I would wonder - though, how quickly data transfer would really be....cell replication takes awhile because the DNA splicing takes a long time, right?

Re:So how long...

[leroybrown]

For the love of god, who in the hell thought this was anything but funny? Look people, the universe does not give a rat's ass that we count to ten. That is, the fact that we have ten digits in our numbering system is COMPLETELY arbitrary. So is the fact that we have 26 letters in our alphabet. I guarantee you all that if we had four fingers on each hand like the Simpsons characters, we'd be counting in octal. Anyone that manages to apply any sort of relation between letters and numbers to come up with some sort of code which bears any sort of relevance is deluding themselves.

Think about it this way... the Bible was originally written in Hebrew. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. Do you really think that the Christian God (should he exist) thought far enough ahead to include people in the bible who numerological name conversions would apply in English? No, that's absolutely absurd.

This is why I swerve to hit these wacky numerologists out there. They're so blissfully ignorant of the arbitrariness of our numbering system and number of letters in our English alphabet that they try to apply some grandiose scheme to letters in order to convince people that they're some kind of mystic.