Researchers find a way of storing data in DNA

[GreyGeek]

http://www.iphoneeinstein.com/2012/0...data-in-dna-3/

Researchers have previously been able to write data in DNA, but only once. Once written, the information was read-only. Now researchers are able to write and rewrite data. They’ve only done one bit at a time, but that’s an essential component of computation, and an important step forward in the potential creation of a biological computer.
“Now we can bring logic and computation inside a cell itself,” Jerome Bonnet, one of the scientists behind the innovation, said...

[whatthefunk]

That scares me a bit. I dont want anybody storing info in my DNA.... It would really suck if you got trojan in your DNA.

[MoonRise]

Did any one ever watch Star Trek Voyager? If I remember correctly, the main computer citcuitry and all were Bio-paks. Basically same concept. Though I'm sure they got that idea from already published theories at that time.

@ WhatTheFunk -- I agree!

[woodsmoke]

Thanks GG, I'm starting a "re-do" of my lectures because all of the MWF science sections have gone to MW lectures because of the positively explosive growth of our student population. And I'll include this in the lecture on DNA.

The whole thing is just "curiouser and curiouser". My oldest boy is one of the top twenty, maybe fewer, "hired guns" in computer programming, and upon looking back at his "formative years", he was fascinated with this as a very young boy, using this device he could make sock caps and mufflers and you name it like lickety split while also doing other things that did not require hands on like watching t.v. or visiting or whatever.

Looking back on it, the device was very "iterative" but was not as "open ended" as just "knitting" so he knew that if he "just did this" he could make a sock cap, but also he could do another whole task, like talking, or thinking, or watching t.v. or listening to music.

The activity is somewhat analagous to computer programming in that one is typing "for-next" loop, or any of a hundred other CLI things but also "thinking about the what the module of the program will do", and then stopping to "run it" rather like stopping to extend the knitting to see if it was coherent. Also even though the knitting was all "the same" he could build in variations of colour just like he might be in the middle of something in a section of code and think....hey, what about this...

so....anyway...the DNA is just four nucleotides and the jillions of iterations of them in various patterns.

so...I'll be adding this to my lecture ...

thanks again.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

That scares me a bit. I dont want anybody storing info in my DNA.... It would really suck if you got trojan in your DNA.

Or a virus. Oh, wait, that happens already