Storing Digital Data in DNA

[mjzee]

Scientists have stored audio and text on fragments of DNA and then retrieved them with near-perfect fidelity—a technique that eventually may provide a way to handle the overwhelming data of the digital age.

The scientists encoded in DNA—the recipe of life—an audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a photograph, a copy of Francis Crick and James Watson's famous "double helix" scientific paper on DNA from 1953 and Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. They later were able to retrieve them with 99.99% accuracy.

The experiment was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Full article here:

WSJ

[ejp626]

I read about this as well, and how the main attraction is that DNA isn't going to degrade in 500 years like paper or certainly our mountains of CD-Rs. But I still don't understand where this DNA could be stored where it wouldn't degrade. And how you would still be able to find a decoder that would work if we are talking about centuries in the future (or know the encoding process to decode the information). We basically can't find digital readers for the floppy diskettes from 10 years ago, so I think they are fooling themselves thinking this is going to be a viable storage medium.

But it still is a cool idea.

[mjzee]

Wait till audiophile DNA comes out!

[Stefan Wood]

The nerves and veins will have to be upgraded to Kimber cable.

[king ubu]

Some of my information is in my DNA, some ain't ... and I'm much more into Erwin Chargaff than smart experts of marketing and visibility or whatever that crap that our corporate world demands. Note sure if that's in my DNA though.