DNA Data Storage?
By Brooklynn Shannon
What is DNA?
DNA Data Storage!
A team of British researchers has used DNA — the genetic building blocks of life — to record Shakespeare's sonnets and excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech.
The experiment, along with another published late last year, shows that what we think about as life's alphabet can also be used to preserve our greatest creations, perhaps for thousands or tens of thousands of years. The researchers used strands of DNA synthesized by a machine — not from a living creature — encoded to create the zeros and ones of digital technology. Although the two teams worked independently and used different codes, their papers are "fraternal twins," Endy said, that show it will soon be both realistic and practical to record vast reams of information in strands of chemicals too small to see