Scientists Store an Operating System, a Movie and a Computer Virus on DNA

Amazing how far technology is coming. I wonder how they retrieve it?

thehackernews.com...

Do you know — 1 Gram of DNA Can Store 1,000,000,000 Terabyte of Data for 1000+ Years.

Just last year, Microsoft purchased 10 Million strands of synthetic DNA from San Francisco DNA synthesis startup called Twist Bioscience and collaborated with researchers from the University of Washington to focus on using DNA as a data storage medium.

However, in the latest experiments, a pair of researchers from Columbia University and the New York Genome Center (NYGC) have come up with a new technique to store massive amounts of data on DNA, and the results are marvelous.

The duo successfully stored 214 petabytes of data per gram of DNA, encoding a total number of six files, which include: A full computer operating system, An 1895 French movie "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat", A $50 Amazon gift card, A computer virus, A Pioneer plaque, A 1948 study by information theorist Claude Shannon.

The new research, which comes courtesy of Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski, has been published in the journal Science.

a reply to: infolurker

That is amazing.
I've long held that humans will learn to program DNA and basically build whatever they want with it.
Program me up a dinosaur with big teeth and claws, no problem...

a reply to: infolurker

We each do it every day, but good find! I enjoyed it.

Pretty impressive. Makes one wonder who coded the marvel of us.

Can you fathom how much information our DNA can be storing? Think of this, a single cell that is fertilized forms us, each cell differentiates to form organs in the proper place, each muscle cell works together to do what we do. Each cell in the brain connect to store memories and make decisions. DNA stores way more information than anyone can comprehend and this DNA gets differentiated as we grow, each cell getting different memory as we live.

Our conscious mind is just a tiny bit of what our bodies know. But people do not understand that. They judge people on test scores, scores that show how much knowledge we have not how much intelligence and wisdom we have.

a reply to: infolurker

Why's the grammar in this article so poor?

Maybe now we will be able to transcribe what is on the crystal skulls?

Who knows.......

a reply to: infolurker

Fascinating and scary at the same time. You want to know how AI will develop and evolve? Here is your answer.

originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: infolurker

Fascinating and scary at the same time. You want to know how AI will develop and evolve? Here is your answer.

Maybe we ourselves are that AI?

Seeded from a comet travelling thru interstellar space, long long ago.

Noahs ark for real, would only take a miniscule amount of DNA to encode all the creatures on earth.

a reply to: D8Tee

Voyager is our current ark, it's almost outside the solar system. Well not really, but it's pretty damn far.

originally posted by: MysticPearl
a reply to: infolurker

Why's the grammar in this article so poor?

science.sciencemag.org...

a reply to: infolurker

Well this is terrifying. I don't know how exactly but I'm sure there's a good reason...

Yeah this is a much bigger 'deal' than it's being made out to be.
F##k humans are cool!

The math(algorithms) that will be
used to open up stable wormholes
and activate hyperspace windows,
will demand insane amounts of
computing power. This type of
storing information combined
with quantum processing will
make that happen...

Just as likely as we will find what a soul is.
Or building that TRUE AI.

What we need now is instant internet...

Imagine the games that we could produce.
Procedural Generating and so on...

I wish i was 5y old now...

a reply to: infolurker

If our DNA is just a huge computer hard drive how can we be anything but AI or created by something way more advanced?

a reply to: infolurker

So does this mean, all of our so called junk DNA may not be junk at all.

It could be stored information that we have not decoded yet ?

Just imagine if we have been to this stage in life previously, and scientists then, stored information on DNA. I somehow doubt it would be public knowledge, this would be huge.

The answer my friends, may be right under our noses.

a reply to: Miccey


More Info:

www.sciencemag.org...

DNA could store all of the world's data in one room

Humanity has a data storage problem: More data were created in the past 2 years than in all of preceding history. And that torrent of information may soon outstrip the ability of hard drives to capture it. Now, researchers report that they’ve come up with a new way to encode digital data in DNA to create the highest-density large-scale data storage scheme ever invented. Capable of storing 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) in a single gram of DNA, the system could, in principle, store every bit of datum ever recorded by humans in a container about the size and weight of a couple of pickup trucks. But whether the technology takes off may depend on its cost.

DNA has many advantages for storing digital data. It’s ultracompact, and it can last hundreds of thousands of years if kept in a cool, dry place. And as long as human societies are reading and writing DNA, they will be able to decode it. “DNA won’t degrade over time like cassette tapes and CDs, and it won’t become obsolete,” says Yaniv Erlich, a computer scientist at Columbia University. And unlike other high-density approaches, such as manipulating individual atoms on a surface, new technologies can write and read large amounts of DNA at a time, allowing it to be scaled up

Wow. Great thread man. That is actually a lot to take in. The ramifications of this is morally concerning. It has great benefit to do both good and harm. Given the track record of humanity I am not so sure this is a good thing.

originally posted by: scubagravy
a reply to: infolurker

So does this mean, all of our so called junk DNA may not be junk at all.

It could be stored information that we have not decoded yet ?

Just imagine if we have been to this stage in life previously, and scientists then, stored information on DNA. I somehow doubt it would be public knowledge, this would be huge.
The answer my friends, may be right under our noses.

I have always believed our so call 'junk' dna, now called non coding dna, recorded our memories through generations and or lifetimes. Not something the scientific community is programed to deal with. Doesn't fit their limited agenda.

Just so everyone is clear on this, and doesn't go too far off the deep end...

The DNA they are using is short single strands of ARTIFICIAL DNA called " oligonucleotides" (oligos for short). Manufactured Oligos are normally used by researchers to map the DNA of living organisms. These researchers have found another use for them. It cannot be emphasised strongly enough that they are not using DNA from living organisms, and there is no pretense that the technique could be 'embedded' in living organism DNA.

Importantly, oligos are single strands that are only half of the DNA requirement. For them to be 'imbedded' into a living organism, their would need to be a 'matching' nucleotide in the DNA of that existing living organism.

In their paper, they point out the difficulties with the process, including the cost of $3500 per megabyte ($3,500,000 per gigabyte) and the 9 minute encoding process. Costs will come down and speeds will increase, eventually, probably. But it ain't gonna be overnight. For comparison, hard disks currently cost about 10 cents per gigabyte.

For those of you suggesting that we need this kind of computing power to make worm holes work, please understand that these researchers have not constructed a new kind of computing system, they have demonstrated a technique for storing data. What we need this for is to remember everything you ever did from womb to tomb in excruciating detail.