[LEFT]New Technique Stores Data in Bacteria
By Bill Christensen
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[/color][/color][/font][LEFT]posted: 10 March 2007
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[/font][LEFT]Artificial DNA with encoded information can be added to the genome of common bacteria, thus preserving the data.
The technique was developed at Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus. If you think those USB flash memory “thumbdrives” are small, check this data storage out.
According to researchers, up to 100 bits of data can be attached to each organism. Scientists successfully encoded and attached the phrase “e=mc2 1905” to the DNA of bacillus subtilis, a common soil bacteria.
One early use for the technique would be to create special markers to identify legitimate versions of pharmaceuticals. However, the bacillus itself creates new copies of the data every time it reproduces itself, thus making it an ideal archival storage system.
Bacillus subtilis also creates extra copies of the data, inserting it in different places in its genome, further safeguarding the data. That’s “multiple backup copies” for those of you who have lost data in the past.
More…
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