23 January 2013 Last updated at 18:03 GMT
Nick Goldman says DNA is a robust and fantastically dense storage mediumScientists have given another eloquent demonstration of how DNA could be used to archive digital data.
The UK team encoded a scholarly paper, a photo, Shakespeare's sonnets and a portion of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech in artificially produced segments of the "life molecule".
The information was then read back out with 100% accuracy.
It is possible to store huge volumes of data in DNA for thousands of years, the researchers write in Nature magazine.
They acknowledge that the costs involved in synthesizing the molecule in the lab make this type of information storage "breathtakingly expensive" at the moment, but argue that newer, faster technologies will soon make it much more affordable, especially for long-term archiving.
"One of the great properties of DNA is that you don't need any electricity to store it," explained team-member Dr Ewan Birney from the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton, near Cambridge.
"If you keep it cold, dry and dark - DNA lasts for a very long time. We know that because we routinely sequence woolly mammoth DNA that is kept by chance in those sorts of conditions." Mammoth remains are many thousands of years old.
The group cites government and historical records as examples of data that could benefit from the molecular storage option.
Much of this information is not required every day but still needs to be kept. Once encoded in DNA, it could be put away safely in a vault until it was needed.
More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21145163
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Huge Amounts Of Data Can Be Stored In DNA
Every film and television programme ever made could be stored in HD quality in a cupful of artificial DNA, say scientists.
Video: DNA can be stored indefinitely
Scientists have used DNA to store an mp3, a jpeg photo, a pdf file - and every one of William Shakespeare's sonnets.
Just as a computer stores digital files as a unique code of 'ones' and 'zeros', scientists wrote information into a strand of synthetic DNA made from a sequence of four chemical 'letters'.
They say data can be written so efficiently that every film and TV programme ever made could be stored in HD quality in just one cupful of DNA.
Currently data is archived on magnetic tape in huge vaults. But the tape degrades and the information on it needs to be copied onto a new tape every few years.
But Nick Goldman of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) says DNA could be stored indefinitely.
More: http://news.sky.com/story/1041917/huge-amounts-of-data-can-be-stored-in-dna
Replies
storage is one thing ..retreival is another
im aiming to refuse to store anything and discover the art of retrieval from the infinite repository as required
fresh and free and travelling light..
.instant responce in each unique moment is the wtg i honour
stored facts are a heavy metal leaden load
enjoy
hi FW..do you have an image of 12 strand dna?
enjoy
This is an important finding in current scientific research, it adds to the bigger question, what is inside the DNA, (the storage space) ,,, big questions and so exciting! Im sure some of it pertains to knowledge about the ET lineage, big big big!
the scientists are funded by "" you-know-who""" lol ... to get answers because they wanna play big god, but seriously Greg Braden looked into this and found the God CODE... ♥
Wait till they find out that the information they have stored already exists within dna in a quantum state...