DNA used as rewritable data storage in cells

sciencenews.org

34 points·plessthanpt05··9 comments

is there any evidence or possibility that this is actually done in biology already? If DNA is writable, then cells have a Von Neumann architecture!

Googling keywords like non-coding RNA, reverse transcriptase, and epigenetics suggests that even further back than this article, this was suspected to be the case.

This is somewhat like the way antibodies are formed. There are genetic changes (recombination) at the DNA level in the antibody hyper-variable regions. This is how we produce antibodies for everything based on a single gene (somewhat).

However, antibody VDJ recombination is more akin to write-only memory. Once it is produced, it doesn't change.

So, if I understand this correctly, it's like Johnny Mnemonic, but you don't have to store the data only in your brain. I bet if you used your entire skin instead of just your brain, you could store a whopping 500 gigabytes!

Joe Davis has been encoding data into DNA for some time.

http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Davis_(artist)

I wonder what the equivalent of "rm -rf /" is in that environment? :)

Probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis

That's more like taking a hammer to your hard disk. What we want is more of a virus that rewrites your genome with a single base.

Obligatory Dresden Codak link: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/

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