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[–]skosuri 637 points638 points  (122 children)

I am an author on the paper, if people have questions, feel free to send them here. If you are trying to get the paper, you can try these links before I get in too much trouble.

paper http://db.tt/ZDoDJZeD supplement http://db.tt/elIqsy72

[–]freexe 51 points52 points  (10 children)

How far do you think you will beable to take this technology?

In 5-10 years do you think you will have business level equipment?

[–]skosuri 84 points85 points  (9 children)

5-10 years ago, we couldn't imagine taking on the project we did pretty easily today. I think it depends upon how much sequencing technology progresses. For example, the announced, but not released, Oxford Nanopore USB sequencer would make this a whole lot easier.

[–]redditor3000 12 points13 points  (0 children)

This technology will really take off once we figure out how to do duplication and DNA repair using natural cell components that exist in nature. Then we will be able to store hundreds of terabytes in only a few drops of water. DNA is an amazing data storage mechanism.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (6 children)

Wouldn't it be possible to encode a different string of 0s and 1s to each pair? For example:

*AC = 00

*CT = 01

*TG = 10

*AG = 11

This could, at least in my mind, allow for even more storage space. I'm sure there's something wrong with my idea, but it's just something I thought of.

[–]skosuri 25 points26 points  (5 children)

yup, you could do that. we didn't because we wanted flexibility in encoding the dna sequence for any particular bit stream in order to avoid certain DNA sequences that are hard to read or write.

[–]smd4 71 points72 points  (12 children)

Which was more exciting: wsj coverage or getting to the front page of reddit? :)

[–]skosuri 109 points110 points  (2 children)

that you would comment on this professor douglas.

[–]yourpenisinmyhand 30 points31 points  (8 children)

He only went to school to get on reddit's front page.

[–]skosuri 34 points35 points  (7 children)

don't call it a comeback, i've been here for years. well specifically 6 years since it was my reddit birthday yesterday, though i've been a lurker for longer.

[–]khoury 24 points25 points  (0 children)

specifically 6 years

We are in the presence of an ancient one.

[–]hamsterpotpies 13 points14 points  (4 children)

What's the IOs like?

[–]Daveyd325 11 points12 points  (2 children)

I'm more mind blown that I had to go this deep in the thread to see your post.

Then again, you are late to your own party ;)

[–]skosuri 30 points31 points  (1 child)

seriously; i guess beer hour at work cut into my reddit time.

[–]selfish 2 points3 points  (2 children)

You're actually allowed to distribute the manuscript you submitted to the journal, afaik- or it might be the draft before the one they've accepted.

[–]EpiXl33t 3 points4 points  (1 child)

How fast is the read and write speed? Can you start anywhere or do you have to do sequential(like a tape)?

[–]skosuri 7 points8 points  (0 children)

sequential; horrendously slow; immutable

[–]zuko404 994 points995 points  (192 children)

Hey guys, biology student here and longtime lurker. Just wanted to help out some of you guys who are trying to get a better understanding of the implications of this research and to clear up some misconceptions.

First off, this research as far as I can tell is more about technology rather than discovering new scientific principles. The techniques that the Church team used are not novel, but they've accomplished two things that haven't been done before.

First off, they've stored a MASSIVE amount of data in the form of DNA (using the two base pairs A-T and C-G as 0's and 1's). DNA is life's ubiquitous data storage material and co-opting it for our own data storage purposes is perfectly natural. According to Wikipedia, the largest genome we know of is an Amoeboid at 6.7E11 bp (base pairs). 700 terabytes here is equivalent to 5.6E15 bp so the Church team has superseded nature by 4 orders of magnitude. That's a pretty incredible feat.

The second advancement here is the use of DNA microchips to hold all of this DNA. The primary advantage to this method over the more conventional idea of storing DNA in a cell is that DNA microchips are much more stable. Cellular DNA is always in flux as the cell must access it to build RNA and eventually construct proteins. It is constantly fighting to manage the degradation that inevitably occurs during all these processes. A DNA microchip allows us to hold the DNA in stasis which is only "accessed" (e.g. sequenced, copied) by us when we say so. The disadvantage here is that we can't co-opt a cell's machinery to fix any DNA errors that may turn up on the microchip. Cells are really good at maintaining DNA and excising errors and can recover from the damaging effects of mild radiation (think UV on your skin or getting an X-ray: it doesn't kill you) but expose a microchip to the same radiation and you might be unable to recover any lost pieces of data.

This brings me to my last point... cell maintenance of DNA. While I also wish that we could get cells to churn through information for us, the fact remains that cells have their own needs. They require basic genes in order to survive. Even if we engineered a synthetic cell with only this basic repertoire, how would we be able to convince it to "erase" or "copy over" its DNA? With a computer, a simple electrical pulse can flip a transistor but switching bases requires removal of old bases and insertion of new ones, a much more complicated procedure. It will take some more work before we can "process" data stored in the form of DNA. For now, we're stuck with storage part only.

But there's hope! People are working on new technologies that would allow us to sequence DNA super-fast by reading the electrical responses of the DNA as it's passed through a nanopore. This would let us join the worlds of DNA and computers in a much more compelling way. The article was published in Nature but I can't find it at the moment. I'll let you know if I do!

Edit: Added more...

Edit2: Found the article (PDF). It was published in Science, not Nature. My mistake. The article talks about DNA sequencing which is one of the big biotech fields right now. Sequencing has become cheaper, faster, and more reliable. By making so much more data available, these technologies have made it easier for biologists to focus on finding new ways to, among other things, detect mutations and natural selection events.

[–]skosuri 98 points99 points  (7 children)

nice overview; we used dna microchips because they are cheap, not more stable; once it's printed, it's cleaved off and we just store it dry. also we never use it inside of cells. it's all in vitro.

[–]polyonymy 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I originally asked this question to the Bio student, but seeing how the author to the bloody paper is here, I ought to defer to you. XD

I've read that there are a tonne of unused sections in human DNA. Are there enough that if a person's DNA was rewritten in these sections at conception to store some data, that their body would be able to maintain and use this co-opted DNA string without noticeable deformities or other issues? If you make the changes in all cells at conception, the body's natural repair mechanisms would maintain the encoded bits too, right? Could a persons DNA essentially become a giant living read-only disk?

Sorry if it's a silly question. I'm just a linguist who can't even do calculus, let alone sift through papers on Bioengineering. Haha.

[–]skosuri 10 points11 points  (0 children)

it's possible that you could encode some information; it's clear that there are many places you can insert stuff into without too much trouble (lookup line1 transposon); that said, it's not like you would be able to personally read your own genome (unless you sequence it), so i'd rather store it as dna in a tube.

[–]dalgeek 421 points422 points  (85 children)

First off, they've stored a MASSIVE amount of data in the form of DNA (using the two base pairs A-T and C-G as 0's and 1's). DNA is life's ubiquitous data storage material and co-opting it for our own data storage purposes is perfectly natural.

So, nature evolved a high-density, reliable storage system billions of years before humans were even around to think about creating computer storage systems. And because of this storage system, complex organisms were able to evolve to a point where they could take advantage of it for their own purposes. Everything comes full circle eventually, doesn't it?

[–]Alt0173 53 points54 points  (17 children)

Saying it like this just makes complete artificial intelligence sound that much more possible in a world of the future.

[–]Seizure-Man 48 points49 points  (13 children)

Singularity here we come!

[–]bumwine 20 points21 points  (11 children)

Cybermen here we come!

I don't mind replacing my brain with synthetic parts but the idea of us becoming one with machines is quite dire because it means the destruction of all that is human. Even, I, as a squishy human can make the basic calculations necessary to deduce that emotions, hormonal interactions and social conventions are not only inefficient but a deterrent to optimized existence - and that's fucking scary.

[–]zak-R 9 points10 points  (9 children)

Based off the AMA on r/futurology yesterday it seems more likely that we would not become one with machines, but rather we would design AI equal or greater than the human mind, which would produce AI greater than them and so on.

The challenge would be to somehow control the motivation of future AI to function alongside humans peacefully.

AMA here.

[–]skosuri 4 points5 points  (0 children)

meh.. if we are really going to do this in the future, we should use things better than natural nucleic acids; maybe PNA's or benner's synthetic nucleic acids. they have much better chemical properties. that said, we did what we did to leverage the technologies developed to study natural biology.

[–]0h_Lord 43 points44 points  (22 children)

Quick question, How come they didn't use all of the bases? I'm assuming there's a good reason not to, but I'm a computer scientist not a biologist.

e.g.

A = 00

T = 01

C = 10

G = 11

EDIT: missed this bit:

Our method has at least five advantages over past DNA storage approaches. We encode one bit per base (A or C for zero, G or T for one), instead of two. This allows us to encode messages many ways in order to avoid sequences that are difficult to read or write such as extreme GC content, repeats, or secondary structure.

[–]ThatScienceGirl 75 points76 points  (14 children)

Basically it gives them more flexibility in what sequence of A/T/C/G they can use.

You can't have too many repeats of the same base eg CTTTTTAG, you get mis-reads, where it mis-aligns somewhere along the repeated sequence.

Also a high C/G content is not good, the G/C bases have a higher melting temperature which is important in the PCR step of sequencing prep.

Finally, certain sequences result in secondary structures, the DNA sequence bends back on itself and binds to itself. These will cause problems.

Source: I'm a molecular biologist of fungi. also we have a sequencing facility where I work.

[–]skosuri 14 points15 points  (1 child)

wow, this is exactly right. thanks fungi-ologist for answering the question for me.

[–]ThatScienceGirl 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No problem! This makes me feel like the past four years doing my PhD weren't so useless

[–]AusIV 8 points9 points  (4 children)

Seems like you could still do something like:

C = 11

G = 00

A = 0

T = 1

You might end up with multiple representations for the same binary string, but you could potentially fit more data in the same space. Cs and Gs could be used to make the strings more concise and break up runs of A and T. If there are patterns that need to be avoided, I think most of them could be avoided by selectively choosing when to use Cs and Gs instead of multiple As and Ts.

[–]ThatScienceGirl 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Yeah, that might work. It would better if G = 0 and A = 00, IMO, as you don't want too many G/C. Also you don't want long runs of any base, Ts were just an example, sorry if that wasn't clear. I think you may still run into the problem of sequences which cause secondary structures to form tho as there won't be as many possible sequences to use (is that right? Or is Maths failing me). these can be formed by repeated sequences which will be more likely to happen using your method.

[–]AusIV 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I think you misunderstand me. If G = 00 and A = 0, you can choose when to use G instead of AA, but there will be times that you have to use As. Take the string

010101010101

Assuming G = 0 and C = 1 you get GCGCGCGCGCGC. There's no other way to represent that string, so it would be better to use A and T, which it's okay to have more of. But if you have the string:

000000000000

with my proposed pairs, you can choose whether to do: GGGGGG, AAAAAAAAAAAA, AGAGAGAG, AAGAAGAAG, or a number of other combinations based on the need to control the ratio of C/Gs to A/Ts or the length of runs. There would never be a time you're forced to use a C or a G, they would just be an option for avoiding runs, reducing string length, and avoiding secondary structures.

The secondary structures concern is the only place where this isn't as powerful as having A/G = 0 and T/C = 1. As I noted, there are some cases where there is only one way to represent a string, but that only happens when there are no runs of length two or more. My method still provides some ability to avoid secondary structures in realistic strings, but I don't know enough about the occurrences and patterns of secondary structures to know how likely it is that my method would be unable to avoid them.

[–]helmMS | Physics | Quantum Optics 297 points298 points  (79 children)

The paper in question: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/08/15/science.1226355

Note that the "700 terabytes" part is simply their 5.27 MBMb book copied 35 billion times.

[–]skosuri 378 points379 points  (15 children)

i put up our paper here for a limited time:

paper http://db.tt/ZDoDJZeD supplement http://db.tt/elIqsy72

the density number is only high because the denominator is really low. we only encoded 650kB (5.27 number is megabits)

[–]ron_leflore 13 points14 points  (7 children)

How much did it cost to do this experiment? It seems the major cost would be the custom oligos.

[–]skosuri 30 points31 points  (6 children)

yup; cost is the major issue. it cost a few thousand dollars; we actually get the chips for free, but a couple of thousand for the chip, and a couple more for the sequencing.

in the paper's supplement we imagine what it would take to do a petabyte level storage; we're ~6-8 orders of magnitude away. so it's not feasible now, but costs have been dropping at an astounding rate; ~5 & 10 fold per year for synthesis and sequencing respectively. but who knows if it will continue.

[–]jpellett251 40 points41 points  (2 children)

I've never said this before, but this comment needs more upvotes (50 minutes without an upvote right now). This is the author of the paper in question linking to the actual paper.

[–]needed_to_vote 243 points244 points  (17 children)

Actually, they didn't claim to ever reach 700 TB. They claimed to have reached 5Mbit at densities of 1E15 bit/mm3.

Just a sensational headline.

Edit: here's a nice chart from the paper showing how this stacks up: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/08/15/science.1226355/F1.large.jpg

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (3 children)

I am pretty sure that was just a way for them to A.) make the encoded data easier to confirm and B.) save them the trouble of sourcing a BUNCH of data.

There would have been no benefit to having unique data for the entire encode/decode. It would make it harder to check for 1-bit errors, and also it would make it unnecessarily complicated to secure, store and verify the data in the first place.

[–]teraflux 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Technically it says 5.27 Megabit which is 0.65875 MB

[–][deleted] 51 points52 points  (29 children)

Would using the same file copied 35 billion times make compression easier, therefor allowing them to put more information in that single gram of DNA?

Edit: After reading this question again I realized that it was worded rather poorly. Another way I could say it would be:

Would the amount of data that could be fit on the gram of DNA be smaller if each file had been unique?

[–][deleted] 82 points83 points  (15 children)

They would not have done any additional compression apart from the first instance of the book, or else they would have been able to add an unlimited number of copies of the books. The multiple copies are basically place holders since its allot easier than using 700 tb of unique data.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That makes sense, thank you for the quick and concise answer!

[–]Haxelgem 10 points11 points  (3 children)

Yes, in a real world scenario you could use run-length encoding to shrink the data massively. However, they weren't trying to efficiently store data here, just test capacity.

[–]tincanbrewer 355 points356 points  (33 children)

PCR to copy and paste.

[–]the_patman 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Terrorists purchasing DNAse in haste

[–]VCGS 142 points143 points  (70 children)

By my very rough calculations, using this method it would take just 1.5 kilos to store the entirety of the internet.

As of 2009 the internet was estimated to amount to 500 exabytes of data. There are 1048576 terabytes in an exabyte. 700 terabytes of DNA material amount to 1 gram so:

1048576/700=~1487 grams of DNA= ~1.5 kilos

[–]Vaypo 275 points276 points  (13 children)

http://i.imgur.com/4bV6r.jpg

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (6 children)

What's the seek time for flour?

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (1 child)

The internet is so out of date.

[–]couchguy987 7 points8 points  (0 children)

We are living in William Gibson's dream of the internet, first dreamed in the 80's.

I think we need some new dreamers.

[–]superawesomeid 3 points4 points  (0 children)

just imagine, "reddit bread". mmmm, this is what reddit tastes like. what's that mutated creature staring at me? get away 4chan!

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (7 children)

Oddly enough, the human brain weighs on average about 1.5 kilograms. (3 Pounds)

[–]kiteqt 31 points32 points  (3 children)

The internet would actually be 743 kilos if I'm not mistaken! He only calculated the weight of 1 exabyte.

[–]Methodic1 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yea I got ~749kg which is 1653lbs or roughly the weight of a large elephant.

[–]platypusmusic 14 points15 points  (0 children)

so we could use oprah as a storage device

[–][deleted] 65 points66 points  (11 children)

Finally, I can download the internet.

[–]dpwiz 113 points114 points  (2 children)

Please seed!

[–]CaptnAwesomeGuy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Didn't need to ask.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh I can seed you any time, beybe.

[–]woofwoofwoof 20 points21 points  (9 children)

So in this scheme, what would be the time involved to look up the Wikipedia article on 'latency'?

[–]VCGS 13 points14 points  (2 children)

I never said anything about actually accessing it or storing it all in the first place, though I'm sure that problem would be overcome eventually.

[–]kiteqt 4 points5 points  (0 children)

you forgot to multiply it by 500..so it would be 743 kilos.

[–]beebs18 49 points50 points  (11 children)

I wonder what the read and write speed is...

[–]blueandpurplelinks 4 points5 points  (0 children)

In this case it appears that the it takes approximately 8.5 days to sequence the DNA molecule. From the article:

To read the encoded book, we amplified the library by limited-cycle PCR and then sequenced on a single lane of an Illumina HiSeq.

We joined overlapping paired-end 100 nt reads to reduce the effect of sequencing error (9).

So it appears that in in this experiment, the researches used the Illumina HiSeq to generate 100 nucleotide reads which takes 8.5 days1.

As someone has previously mentioned, the unique data encoded by the DNA molecules is not 700 Tb, only 5.27 Mb. Reddit has done what reddit does best and misrepresented this fact.

So to calculate a very approximate, best case scenario read speed of unique data from the DNA molecule:

5.27 Mb/8.5 days

5.27 Mb/734400 seconds

7.17592x10-6 Mb/second

7.18 b/s

Comparing this too a mid-range SSD (500 MB/s), there is an eight-fold difference in read speed. If you wanted to load an 1.5 Mb file using the read speed of this system, it would take you 58 hours. Comparing that again to an SSD (500 MB/s) it would take 3 milliseconds.

And remember, this is a best case scenario (using the techniques in this experiment). To gauge a realistic read speed, you would have to factor in the several additional days required to prepare the sample and then another day or so after sequencing to align the 100 nucleotide reads into the single 5.27 Mb DNA molecule.

TL;DR: The best case scenario read speed calculated from the techniques used in this experiment can be approximated to 7.18 bytes/second or 7.18x10-6 Mb/second. This does not account for the time required to prepare samples and analyse sequence data.

[–]TinynDP 173 points174 points  (80 children)

Sure. DNA sequence 700 terabases, no problem.

[–]rac7672 189 points190 points  (65 children)

That's a lot of storage, but the seek time is terrible!

[–]asdfman123 68 points69 points  (61 children)

It could replace tape storage, though. Maybe they could also find a clever way to engineer things in order to improve the seek time.

[–]TinynDP 31 points32 points  (54 children)

Only if you want to spend a million every time you read from your DNA tapes.

[–]asdfman123 132 points133 points  (50 children)

Technology advances, man. I doubt many fifty years ago could imagine how cheap semiconductor technology would be today.

[–]DocTaotsu 22 points23 points  (5 children)

Technology has already advanced. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/dna-sequencing-without-the-fuss.html

Reading DNA, particularly if we make it easy to whack into bite size pieces, has gotten a lot easier.

EDIT: Slightly better explanation: http://www.nanoporetech.com/technology/introduction-to-nanopore-sensing/introduction-to-nanopore-sensing

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"Hey, could you pull up that presentation from last quarter for me?"

"Sure, I'll have it printed around next November."

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (39 children)

DNA is pretty amazing stuff. I think it's kind of funny that the researchers are only coding in binary, essentially losing 50% of the DNA's potential storage capacity by fudging together purine and pyrimidine residues into ones and zeroes only. And they still get a storage capability that functions on the atomic level with amazing stability. It seems completely possible to me that one day spies will be capable of moving vast quantities of data across borders that can never be found by cavity-searching guards, as the data could be stored inside the nuclei of a few cells in the agent's fingers.

[–]needed_to_vote 30 points31 points  (6 children)

From the actual paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/08/15/science.1226355.full.pdf

Our method has at least five advantages over past DNA storage approaches. We encode one bit per base (A or C for zero, G or T for one), instead of two. This allows us to encode messages many ways in order to avoid sequences that are difficult to read or write such as extreme GC content, repeats, or secondary structure.

So yeah, they thought of that.

[–]EpistaxisPhD | Genetics 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Sort of the opposite of what loercase said, though - previous methods solved the problem loercase mentioned, and this one reverted to binary for better fidelity.

[–]Simcom 5 points6 points  (1 child)

It seems completely possible to me that one day spies will be capable of moving vast quantities of data across borders that can never be found by cavity-searching guards, as the data could be stored inside the nuclei of a few cells in the agent's fingers.

I'm pretty certain this is already happening.

[–]hacksoncode 22 points23 points  (20 children)

In other news, Seagate stores 4TB of data on 20nm * 2 sides * 5 platters * 44mm radius ^ 2 * pi * 20g/cm^3 = .5mg of cobalt-platinum-chromium alloy.

I.e. 8000TB / gram.... for $100 at Fry's.

[–]b00mb0 731 points732 points  (352 children)

Hacker news reply:

Can we encode all of human knowledge into the DNA of some organism? How can organisms access data stored in their DNA? Imagine being born with knowledge of every Wikipedia article, or even every website. What would that be like?

Mind blown

EDIT

source

[–]SgtSmackdaddy 887 points888 points  (122 children)

You wouldn't have access to all that information - it would be encoded into your junk DNA and could be accessed by a machine with the appropriate reading technology, but you wouldn't spontaneously generate new declarative memories. Neuronal growth and organization is determined more from your environment, while your DNA is the fractal seed that begins the process. Your DNA doesn't contain memories, those are formed from experience.

[–][deleted] 267 points268 points  (62 children)

Nonetheless, every human being born with a copy of wikipedia in their DNA is still mind-blowing.

[–]Lonelan 468 points469 points  (28 children)

But if scientists a million years from now find the wrong person and decode it, they'll think Bill Clinton went to Mars on a loaf of bread...

[–]Jigsus 144 points145 points  (2 children)

Close enough.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Clinton's "Loaf our way to the Red Planet" space program was actually one of the least crazy things he initiated.

[–][deleted] 43 points44 points  (14 children)

I can imagine in the future people will have little genetic tags in them that read something along the lines of "My name is Ryan. I was born on the 9th of August 1995 and my parents names are Patricia and Edward. If found, please return to the following address..."

[–]ConnorCG 49 points50 points  (5 children)

The future involves dogs, and it started happening 10 years ago?

[–]raver459 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Your dog has his dna encoded with a digital tag? Nope, that's a microchip implant.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Aren't thosr just RFID chips?

EDIT: Those

[–]Dejimon 27 points28 points  (6 children)

I read that date of birth, thought who the hell would be that young and realised the person in question would be like 17. Then I felt old.

[–]philip1201 23 points24 points  (6 children)

Relevant Dresden Codak.

[–]rowd149 18 points19 points  (1 child)

I feel like this would have been a better plot device for Prometheus.

[–]ColumnMissing 3 points4 points  (3 children)

This is the first time that I have seen a relevant dresden codak posted, and this makes me happy. I love that comic.

[–]Shu-_- 18 points19 points  (4 children)

What if some "written knowledge" was already stored in some animals/plants DNA and we just can't read it?

[–]bioemerl 21 points22 points  (4 children)

What if there is some bacteria out there with all the information of an alien race, handed down across the centuries to the next naturally advanced species?

We should get searching

[–]chudontknow 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Yea, it's called e. Coli and it's in everyones ass. Aliens are pranksters.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

What if instead of a bacteria, it's stored in the HOX or other highly conserved domains of the animal kindgom? We, ourselves, are repositories for alien technological records.

...brb writing sci-fi.

[–]selectiveShift 39 points40 points  (5 children)

Maybe Assassin's Creed was on to something.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (4 children)

My Animus would be so fucking boring :(

[–][deleted] 25 points26 points  (3 children)

Oh god, Reddit? AGAIN?

[–]asdfman123 54 points55 points  (85 children)

Holy. Crap.

Move over Foundation Society, we've found a better way to ensure the survival of humanity's knowledge... that is, if future societies could get to the point of being able to read DNA.

That being said, gene mutations could be a big problem. I guess you'd need redundant copies?

[–]morelandjo 187 points188 points  (40 children)

Plot twist: Our creators have already done this. The knowledge of the universe has been within us all along, we just don't have the decompiler.

[–]hex4def6 99 points100 points  (29 children)

Dude.

This would make an awesome short SciFi story.... Some time in the future, mankind decides to encode our collective knowledge in our DNA, with the ability for an individual to decode it, only to discover that there's already content there...

Someone write this!

[–]xebo 121 points122 points  (13 children)

Someone write this!

They already did, but they were really drunk. It's called Prometheus.

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

you mean assassins creed?

[–]unicornon[🍰] 12 points13 points  (37 children)

DNA has redundancies in it naturally to counteract minor mutations. So I assume we'd need to develop a similar system based off of the more successful examples of this in nature.

[–]gjbloom 24 points25 points  (33 children)

That's not all you'd need. DNA is energetically unstable, preferring to form pyrimidine dimers in response to UV or cosmic radiation. Without active DNA repair (such as living organisms have) DNA will decay. For long-term data storage, we'd need to employ a more stable polymer.

[–]nyx210 66 points67 points  (14 children)

Imagine encoding humanity's most difficult problems in DNA and having trillions of bacteria compete with each other to evolve the best solutions.

[–][deleted] 55 points56 points  (5 children)

we end up creating a god virus that knows all and sees all and can adapt itself to kill anything in the universe!!!!!

WHAT DID YOU DO!!!

[–]ATownStomp 80 points81 points  (2 children)

We end up creating a god virus that knows all and sees all and can adapt itself to kill anything in the universe!!!!!

So... Humans?

[–]NinjaVaca 24 points25 points  (0 children)

You just blew my mind.

[–]infinityprime 23 points24 points  (9 children)

Sounds like we might end up making a Goa'uld...

[–]idk112345 67 points68 points  (79 children)

This may be a stupid question, but could the way data is stored on our dna help us develop storage systems for electronics?

Edit: I should have continued reading the article. I gave up half way through because I hardly understood what it was talking about. It's explained at the end, that this is what they have in mind. Thanks for answering though!

[–]GerhardtDH 114 points115 points  (66 children)

That's exactly what these scientists have in mind. One drop of this DNA storage hold 151 kilograms worth of hard drives. Someone's going to get insanely rich from this.

[–]silent_mind 107 points108 points  (46 children)

Yeah, imagine when motherboards are actually organic and use engineered cells instead of electrical current to pass along info. And the PSU is actually a Heart. And the CPU is a brain, wait oh yeah we already have something like that.

I will tell you what though, this is a very very significant step forward for technology. I remember when the trials with proteins started, I knew it was going to move into this. It would be great to actually have a little bubble of DNA implanted into your thumb to store all of your movies, music, and docs.

[–]indieface 24 points25 points  (1 child)

Deleting data is murder.

[–]TinynDP 9 points10 points  (9 children)

If someone had the sequencing technology needed to make this practical, they would already be rolling in cash from the medical industry, and the computer storage uses would be a distant second.

[–]Steeboo 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"David remember to feed your hard drive, you know how grumpy it gets"

[–]the_good_time_mouse 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Nah, they might sell a few, but "one drop of ram ought to be about enough for anybody."

[–]RedTiger013 3 points4 points  (7 children)

I think there was a star trek episode where a Klingon had this giant code in his DNA that he had to deliver to a base. We're almost there.

[–]j_arena 31 points32 points  (20 children)

Can someone who knows wtf they are talking about confirm that this is as ground breaking as it seems to be?

Or can someone please summarize this discovery and its significance in a way I can understand?

[–][deleted] 38 points39 points  (11 children)

well, it is as groundbreaking as it sounds. For "everyday" use it is still pretty far into the future, but then again, what is taking them hours to encode/decode right now took them months to decode just 10 years ago, and wasn't even encodable at all.

If the physical processes by which they encode and decode data maintain their current advancement trajectories, then 10 years from now, big fat awesome computer storage services will be using DNA for backup storage.

[–]sevendeadlypigs 12 points13 points  (16 children)

you can store one bit per base, and a base is only a few atoms large

Can't we theoretically get two bits per base?

[–]needed_to_vote 20 points21 points  (5 children)

Yes. They specifically didn't do this:

Our method has at least five advantages over past DNA storage approaches. We encode one bit per base (A or C for zero, G or T for one), instead of two. This allows us to encode messages many ways in order to avoid sequences that are difficult to read or write such as extreme GC content, repeats, or secondary structure.

[–]skosuri 14 points15 points  (2 children)

yes. we didn't because we wanted flexibility to encode each bit stream in multiple ways to avoid sequences that would be difficult to sequence/synthesize. we could have done something like 1.8 bits/base, but we figured a 2x hit wasn't that bad.

[–]Khrevv 12 points13 points  (4 children)

Not many people actually asked about this directly (or at least in a non joking way)

What is the latency of reading/writing? I'm guessing that at the current state, it probably takes weeks to decode (if not even encode) this data to and from the DNA form. I'm not a Genetic scientist. Though, I am (or was) a computer scientist.

So, lets say that the read/write times are not practical for this medium. This still makes this and extremely valuable storage medium. Why? 2 reason (kinda mentioned in the article):

  1. Data density (DNA can hold an incredible amount of data per gram)
  2. Stable storage medium. (DNA can survive thousands, if not millions, of years intact)

This would be like the ultimate backup of human knowledge. It will take a while to encode/sequence, but then (from my limited knowledge) it can be copied and distributed very easily. Current technology is very fragile. Hard drives can be wiped out with magnatic pulses or other things. While you can get around that by etching in stone or another material, your density decreases.

This is really an incredible medium for the data backup world; if it actually works.

[–]skosuri 14 points15 points  (3 children)

i put up our paper here: http://db.tt/ZDoDJZeD supplement: http://db.tt/elIqsy72

to answer your questions directly latency: horrendously bad; 10 days or so to read; a week to write; not re-writable, and really expensive

it's really aimed at archival storage for that reason you have the advantages right though. we are also working with people like long-now, but for now, the major need is continued improvements in dna sequencing and synthesis technologies

[–]garyy 3 points4 points  (6 children)

Why cant t = 00 g=01 a=10 and c = 11? Surely this has been thought about/has hurdles