
Scientists can now tweak DNA molecules to store data - tuxguy
https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/smoke-on-the-water-data-in-the-dna
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klmr
The title suggests that this is an entirely new achievement. But (as also
mentioned in the article), this has been possible for several years, since
2012 [1]. Steady progress is being made at decreasing the cost. But the
procedure itself isn’t new.

Furthermore, the title suggests that existing DNA molecules are “tweaked” to
encode arbitrary information. While that’s possible [2], the procedures in
question don’t tweak existing DNA, they synthesise new DNA molecules, which is
vastly more efficient.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11875](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11875)

[2]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23017](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23017)

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ccozan
Exactly, this DNA does not get to live inside a cell.

The next evolution is to craft viruses that carry the payload and use a
(human) host to carry the information around.

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StapleHorse
I hope they put some DEP in there. I guess that your liver "running" some
vacation videos won't be good for your health :)

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jerf
Random DNA data, or densely-encoded data that is effectively random at the
symbol level, will be very likely to have a stop codon very early in the
sequence:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_codon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_codon)
Deliberately constructed sequences can have stop codons added on purpose,
although it would be extreme paranoia, since AFAIK there isn't a pathway for
DNA to just wander into a cell and get incorporated, as that would be an
extreme hazard to the cell. As it is they put a lot of work into making it a
lot more difficult than that, and you need something at least as sophisticated
as a virus to get in.

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klmr
For stop codons to be relevant the first step would have to be to transcribe
the synthetic DNA into RNA, which would require the presence of adequate
promoter sequences. Given their complexity and spacing, this would already be
quite unlikely — so most of that DNA would never produce RNA. But actual gene
expression isn’t the only side-effect of introducing random sequences
(although it would be by far the most severe): The synthetic sequences might
also contain spurious regulatory motifs, or destroy the spacing of existing
regulatory regions (not to mention that altogether random insertions would
potentially destroy existing coding sequences).

At any rate, this is all purely academic since it makes very little sense to
inject synthetic data DNA in living cells: Living cells have a very xenophobic
attitude towards foreign DNA (as they see it as potentially viral) and try to
destroy it. Once that’s solved, the synthetic data DNA now sits in a cell.
Wet, and full of enzymes. These are actually not very good conditions for DNA
molecules to persist. Cells age and die, and fragment their own DNA in the
process. Or if they don’t, they copy the DNA and, while doing so, introduce
errors.

No; DNA as a storage medium for data makes most sense when it is dried up and
frozen. Better yet, vitrified (but so far there’s no way of undoing DNA
vitrification without damaging it.

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chrisweekly
“River of Gods” by Ian MacDonald (narrated by Jonathan Keeble), one of my
favorite audiobooks in recent years, was my first exposure to this idea.

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sethbannon
A startup called Catalog Technologies has been already demonstrated DNA
storage. For their demo they encoded Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in DNA.

[https://youtu.be/ESGVJBXR4KE](https://youtu.be/ESGVJBXR4KE)

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netrap
Very cool. Long road to get to commercialization. Can you imagine a 2.5" HDD
that has some crazy DNA reading mechanism in it?!

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adameast1978
Good article however can't say that for all the articles on Cosmos Magazine.
Think many articles are highly speculative and border on Pseudo Science.

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downrightmike
Maybe one day they'll remove the latent virus code in our DNA and use those
areas up for DNA Storage. Imagine if every human that went into space to
colonize, had a library of information in their finger tips.

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k_lander
Question: with latent virus code removed, does the cell use less energy to
replicate or is able to replicate faster?

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klmr
In theory it should, and substantially, since DNA replication is a highly
energy dependent process. In practice we can’t just nilly-willy remove genetic
material from our chromosomes, even if it ostensibly has no useful function.
That said, scientists have attempted long-range deletions in mouse and some of
those show no phenotype (within the highly limited study!). But as far as I
know they didn’t look at energy expenditure.

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xvilka
Next steps are: write all internet contents into DNA spirals and engineer
organism carrying them. The long term goal is to provide an access from brain
to this information somehow. Hopefully it will be possible.

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PakG1
Shades of Johnny Mnemonic.

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MustrumRidcully
Next Steps : Engineer a virus to mine bitcoin using the brain power.

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visarga
Then it would just become CheapCoin, wouldn't it?

