Scientists use man-made DNA speck to store digital data!

Last updated on: January 27, 2013 at 10:21 pm by Desh Kapoor

Scientists use man-made DNA speck to store digital data! 2013-01-27T22:21:24-06:00 Desh Kapoor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Scientists have now created a synthetic DNA and used it to store 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a PDF of a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr’s “I Have a Dream” speech on it. The speck of hardly even visible DNA

Scientists in Britain have announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage that could fit the world’s entire three billion terabytes of stored data into the palm of your hand.

They said a speck of man-made DNA could hold mountains of data that could be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years. The contents are “read” by sequencing the DNA – as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on – and turning it back into computer code.

“We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it,” said Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The entire process is absolutely revolutionary and could completely change the way data is stored and passed on. For millenia even.

“We downloaded the files from the web and used them to synthesise hundreds of thousands of pieces of DNA. The result looks like a tiny piece of dust,” said Emily Leproust of Agilent, a biotech company that took the digital data and used it to synthesise molecules of DNA in a laboratory in the United States.

Agilent then mailed the sample across the Atlantic to the EBI, where the researchers soaked it in water to reconstitute it and used standard sequencing machines to unravel the code. They recovered and read the files with 100 per cent accuracy. “It’s also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy,” Goldman added.

Given the already incredible amount of data that is stored in a human’s DNA, one even shudders to think what could happen if that DNA is further tweaked to load many additional Terabytes of data?

Without fully knowing the functioning of the body and how it actually thrives holistically, one wonders if it is the right way to do? But it is mindboggling nevertheless!

European Bioinformatics Institute

Martin Luther King

Nature (journal)

United States

Previous Post

January 27, 2013

Pain and Events of India-Pakistan Partition: A special BBC Presentation

Next Post

January 27, 2013 Pope wants Faithful to "convert" to Twitter

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Aarti Achievement and Leadership AfPak Africa Annual and Year-end Asia Audio Australia Behavioural Sciences Bhagwad Gita Bhagwad Gita Blogging Blogs Business Business Intelligence Business Strategy Cannes Careers Chanakya China Conservation Corruption Creative Daily Links Desh Poems Development & Welfare Devotional Audio Devotional Songs Drama Earth Economics Education Entertainment Environment Europe Everyday Quotes Featured Articles Featured Songs Finance Flickr Pictures Food Geo-Political Global Warming Globalization Health & Medicine Hinduism Historic History Humour India Indian Culture Indian music Indian Weddings Israel Issues Legal Link Love Minorities Misc Motivation and Personal Development Movie Lists Movie Reviews Movies Mumbai terror attacks Natural Disasters Nature News Outsourcing Pakistan Parenting Personal Philosophy Poetry Politics Poverty Quotes Recipe Regular Blog Post Relationships Religion Religious/Spiritual Audio Sciences Showcase Slideshow South Asia Special Stories Spiritual Quotes Spirituality Sports Stories Strategy Technology Technology Terrorism Travel Uncategorized US Video Women Women_s Rights Worship Yoga

Select a Month December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 June 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 September 2014 August 2014 January 2014 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who rebelled against David and declared himself king at Hebron?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Sheba Amnon Adonijah Absalom