DNA for data storage

Researchers have successfully stored information in synthetic DNA and then sequenced the DNA to read the data. Nick Goldman and his colleagues from the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) encoded all of Shakespeare's sonnets, an audio clip of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Watson and Crick's paper on DNA's structure, a photo of the EBI, and an explanation of their data conversion technique. Last year, Harvard molecular geneticist George Church encoded a book he had written in DNA, but EBI's breakthroughs are in the way the data is encoded and its error-correction. From the abstract of their scientific paper published at Nature:

We encoded computer files totalling 739 kilobytes of hard-disk storage and with an estimated Shannon information10 of 5.2 × 106 bits into a DNA code, synthesized this DNA, sequenced it and reconstructed the original files with 100% accuracy. Theoretical analysis indicates that our DNA-based storage scheme could be scaled far beyond current global information volumes and offers a realistic technology for large-scale, long-term and infrequently accessed digital archiving. In fact, current trends in technological advances are reducing DNA synthesis costs at a pace that should make our scheme cost-effective for sub-50-year archiving within a decade.

"Synthetic double-helix faithfully stores Shakespeare's sonnets" (Thanks, Mike Pescovitz!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE: data • dna • storage

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The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Jason Baker

So when this technology inevitably makes it into living cells, and mutations occur, will the new versions be considered derivative works?
- Boundegar
  
  This technology is already present in living cells, in fact the DNA inside a single cell can store the genome of an entire cell.
  - Jason Baker
    
    …I thought it was pretty clear “this technology” referred to computer files encoded in synthetic DNA, but I’ll still laugh a little.
Gary Fouty

I still recall a conjecture by Isaac Asimov that if some alien visitor to earth a million years ago wanted to send a message to the future earth, the best way would be to encode it in DNA of some organism. Certainly hard to think of anything else likely to last as well, though one might think mutations could spoil the message over time.
http://profile.yahoo.com/KV3PDLBSUEJ3YCGEWYUGDQ664E Leo

WAT
lysdexia

I wonder if cosmic rays could have ill effects?

“Okay! Let’s look at grandma’s wedding pictOHMYGOD THE KRAKEN!”
- technogeekagain
  
  Ill effects? Yes… but that’s why error-correcting codes are used. (Just as they are for other forms of data storage which are either at high risk or carry critical information.
  
  (Back in the day, some mainframes used to spend up to a third of their hardware continuously checking the other two-thirds, correcting errors where possible, and ensuring that they were reported in a way that let them be easily corrected even when the error was intermittent. These days, you folks won’t even deign to pay for parity bits … yes, memory is more reliable than it was, but a lot of this is that MS has convinced you that machines are supposed to malfunction.)
http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy

Watson and Crick’s paper on DNA’s structure, a photo of the EBI, and an explanation of their data conversion technique

Yo dawg, I heard you like DNA…
http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

Here’s hoping that the unpacked encoding of Hamlet generates an infinite number of monkeys.
- lysdexia
  
  http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2122#comic
  
  Or not.
- technogeekagain
  
  Unpacking the genetic code of monkeys yields an infinite number of monkeys at much lower cost…
http://twitter.com/ExTechOp Otto J. Mäkelä

You have a copy-paste typographical error there: amount of information should be 5.2 × 10^6
anansi133

Time capsules could take on a whole new meaning.
technogeekagain

I’m chuckling at the random pile of data used in the experiment. “Let’s see, what do we have on hand that’s amusing and adds up to enough bits to be interesting?”
http://2000ah.blogspot.in/ Edward

That is so sci-fi in real life.
- Graceless
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_(novel)
  
  Hold me.
feetleet

Now that we know this CAN be done, maybe it’s worth taking a step back and ‘reading’ our OWN dna as non-biological ‘text,’ looking for indicia of language or symbology.

Not looking for ‘God,’ necessarily. Instead, imagine we’re the product of some kind of deliberate panspermia, with Arecibo-style blueprints for something like faster-than-light travel or a Dyson sphere CONTAINED in us.

If the Earth was going to end, and humans wanted to let a new world have a crack at it, but hadn’t yet mastered space travel, we could use life itself as a time capsule containing all human knowledge. Encode a bunch of tardigrades with everything from Shakespeare to the Manhattan project, then ‘hitchhike’ a few thousand on the backs of every near-passing comet.

Or let’s say you’re a Type II or III Kardashev-scale civilization from Alpha Centauri, and you discover, conclusively, that FTL is impossible. The most efficient way to ‘colonize’ a galaxy, then, might be to send self-unpacking life spinning off on comets/meteoresquerie to all the closest goldilocks zones.

The ‘data’ encoded in the life could be as simple as a star coordinate, so us ‘colonists’ would know where to phone home, or where to look for instructions. This would have the additional benefit of halving communication delays (the same reason robotic probes are advanced as a possibility for interstellar comm).

It’s at least arguable that the self-preserving nature of dna leads INEXORABLY to natural selection, and so, to sentience. But the raison d’etre of dna itself is opaque. Just like a virus, dna has no natural REASON to exist other than its own self-replication, but that still begs the question. Maybe the seeming arbitrariness and unlikelihood of a rock pocked with volcanoes birthing humans is MEANT to attract our attention. Not as proof of God’s love, but as the volcanic glass that “has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield.” Maybe it’s our Macguffin.

Now, the DNA ‘data’ would have to stick with the organisms through thick and thin, all the way from tardigrades up to homo sapiens. But wouldn’t you know it – we have that!!!!!!!!

MITOCHONDRIAL DNA – still kicking around in humans and eukaryotes alike – is as old as life on Earth.

I’ll give you a moment to catch your breath…..it gets even better….

It has been suggested that Mitochondrial DNA is the cause of (and so, related to the cure for) AGING.

http://pliki.supernova.com.pl/CELLFOOD/BADANIA/THE_MITOCHONDRIAL_FREE_RADICAL_THEORY_OF_AGING.pdf

I expect a first draft on my desk by Friday.
- unclegabby
  
  The seed is just as much the point as the flower.
  - technogeekagain
    
    ”A zygote is a gamete’s way of making another gamete.”
- robuluz
  
  Yes. Awesome.
Conan Librarian

And you can bet somebody at the MPAA is drafting a bill against DNA copyright information, even as we speak.
dr

So I have to re-buy my whole music collection again in yet another format?
http://www.facebook.com/joe.gilbert.946 Joe Gilbert

I bet if we used this technique to decode the human genome we would find a note from God saying “Drink your Ovaltine”
unclegabby

Doesn’t DNA decay fairly quickly once outside a living organism?
- bardfinn
  
  It’s fairly fragile, yes.
  - unclegabby
    
    So it more of an example to the general public of the scale and capacity of DNA than something that can be actually applied? Because if the DNA if full of unrelevant to living information….
Antinous / Moderator

So if we take the encoded speech and turn it into a living being, do we get Natasha Henstridge?
- http://www.facebook.com/joe.gilbert.946 Joe Gilbert
  
  That or an orange haired Milla Jovovich. Either way, I’d call it a win.
- robuluz
  
  You guys obviously haven’t seen ‘Splice’.
  - Tynam
    
    (shivers involuntarily)
daemonsquire

This reminds me of a Christian Bök project.
http://excelsior-station.wikidot.com Sarge Misfit

That’s only one strand, though. There’s room for another couple of dozen or so …

Igor! Igor! Fire up ze dyno-mometer!!
http://egalwaat.lu pa

Wait ’till the first computer viruses appear. You’ll get a cold from them!
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

The remakes of Cutthroat Island, Waterworld, and 25% of all pirate movies will be much improved by having the treasure map encoded in DNA, instead of [SPOILERS] tattooed on somebody’s back.
DreamboatSkanky

ACGT!
- robotnik
  
  Gesundheit