How to preserve fleeting digital information with DNA for future generations

phys.org ^

[BenLurkin]

One team has demonstrated that DNA they encapsulated can preserve information for at least 2,000 years, and they're now working on a filing system to make it easier to navigate.

...

"A little after the discovery of the double helix architecture of DNA, people figured out that the coding language of nature is very similar to the binary language we use in computers," says Grass, who is with ETH Zurich. "On a hard drive, we use 0s and 1s to represent data, and in DNA, we have four nucleotides A, C, T and G."

But DNA has two major advantages over hard drives: size and durability. An external hard drive about the size of a paperback book can back up five terabytes of information and might last 50 years. In theory, a fraction of an ounce of DNA could store more than 300,000 terabytes. And, from archaeological finds, scientists know that DNA from hundreds of thousands of years ago can still be sequenced today.

...

Grass' team has encoded DNA with 83 kilobytes of text from the Swiss Federal Charter from 1291 and the Method of Archimedes from the 10th century. They encapsulated the DNA in silica spheres and warmed it to nearly 160 degrees Fahrenheit for one week, which is the equivalent of keeping it for 2,000 years at about 50 degrees. When they decoded it, it was error-free.

Now that the researchers have demonstrated how to synthetically preserve DNA for long periods of time, they're tackling the next challenge.

"In DNA storage, you have a drop of liquid containing floating molecules encoded with information," Grass says. "Right now, we can read everything that's in that drop. But I can't point to a specific place within the drop and read only one file."

[ConservativeInPA]

This is true. I know since aliens inplanted a message in my DNA over 2,500 years ago. They saw the future. The message in my DNA says that Obama is the devil.

[brivette]

I thought it spelled “SOS”.

[tbw2]

So instead of computer viruses which cannot actually hurt people, we’ll see biological viruses to attack your data, potentially harming people in the process.

[Junk Silver]

Once the encoded DNA is implanted in an intern’s blue dress, file access and management issues become much more straightforward.

[Boogieman]

Nah, not unless they start storing this DNA inside cells. Viruses need to attack cellular organisms in order to replicate and survive, so they would be pretty useless for getting at DNA that isn’t in a cell.

At some point, something digital will be reading this data and translating it anyway, so if I wanted to steal it, I’d just write a regular computer virus to hack that equipment and read what is in the DNA for me. Much simpler than trying to engineer a real virus :)

[captain_dave]

This is an example of the foolish use of science. If we have to be concerned about losing information and want people 2000 years in the future to be able to read it then hiding it in DNA is just about the stupidist thing to do. What did the ancient civilizations do? They inscribed records on stone and pottery - stuff that lasts a long time and is easy to see and read.

[grey_whiskers]

Use a blue dress.