Saturday, February 21, 2009

Researchers store data in bacteria DNA

Researchers store data in bacteria DNA - Innovation- msnbc.com:

"FUJISAWA, Japan - These days, data get stored on disks, computer chips, hard drives and good old-fashioned paper. Scientists in Japan see something far smaller and more durable — bacteria. The four characters that represent the genetic coding in DNA work much like digital data. Character combinations can stand for specific letters and symbols — so codes in genomes can be translated, or read, to produce music, text, video and other content. While ink may fade and computers may crash, bacterial information lasts as long as a species stays alive — possibly a mind-boggling million years — according to Professor Masaru Tomita, who heads the team of researchers at Keio University."



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