
The open questions are:
- How does one apply copy protection to that?
- Do the rounded corners infringe patents?
- Is the encoder/ decoder Lightning compatible?
- Is it tweetable?
It’s not the first time that digital data has been encoded on DNA, but new research published today in Nature brings bio-storage a significant step closer to reality. Scientists have previously demonstrated that DNA is viable as a digital storage medium – for example, Stanford University demonstrated last year that a bit …
Copy protection: cis-diamminedichloroplatinum (arguably the worst anti-cancer drug ever). Sadly it also permanently read protects the DNA. But we shouldn't let a little side effect like data loss get in the way of something as important as DRM.
Rounded corners: maybe we'll get lucky and no one will notice that a helix is a three dimensional projection of a rounded quadrilateral with straight sides approaching length 0?
Lightning compatibility could be provided via the approved mortgage compatible cabling.
For an additional fee it could be made tweetable by incorporating into Songbird(TM) of your choice.
"So we figured, let's break up the code into lots of overlapping fragments going in both directions, with indexing information showing where each fragment belongs in the overall code, and make a coding scheme that doesn't allow repeats."
While I've never written an operating system from scratch, this seems to be a really convoluted way of solving a problem.
Ring me when it can print out 'Hello world'.
Using DNA sounds like an incredibly dangerous thing to do. It only needs a gene splicing virus from some GMO experiment to accidently insert a DNA stored copy of Wikipedia into a cell and next thing it will become self aware and takeover the world.
Frivolity aside, couldn't they have used some other protein sequence to achieve the same effect? Using GNA, PNA would have less chance of accidentally becoming entangled with DNA. TNA may also be useful but the ability to create hybrid DNA-TNA may come with its own problems.
"Frivolity aside, couldn't they have used some other protein sequence to achieve the same effect?"
Theoretically perhaps, but practically using proteins has some issues.
1) Protein sequencing isn't anywhere near the same league as DNA sequencing. We can just about determine the sequence of a few residues from one end of a protein. If it's pure.
2) Proteins often don't store well. DNA in dry form stores really well.
3) In-vitro protein synthesis is not easy. The usual way to get a protein sample is to produce a gene encoding it then put it in an organism which will make it for you. Then extract and purify it.
So apart from writing, reading and the wait in between it's a potentially effective approach.
To answer what I think was your real concern, creating what is to a cell essentially random DNA really isn't a big risk. Apart from that, the paper isn't about storing information in living cells, all the above comments notwithstanding.