The question is...
Is it faster than NAND?
In a move that could have appeared in a Michael Crichton novel, Stanford University brainiacs have written and read a binary digit encoded in a DNA cell sequence which survives cell reproduction - a non-volatile genetic bit. DNA, Deoxyribonucleic acid, contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning …
Alan Smithie, I call pedant fail. The boffins were using bacterial cells and bacterial enzymes, so antibiotics would mess things up, just as a few bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) would.
And I'd be willing to bet some Saccharomyces cerevisiae product that the bacteria they used was E. coli.
The title says they crammed it with binary data -- but the article says it is one bit currently, and a decade away from a byte.
But storing large amounts of data should be relatively trivial. It sounds like the innovation here is that it is R/W storage (of one bit) in that they can flip the bit via enzymes, and further, it might be possible to program the genome of the bacteria to produce the enzymes itself so it can affect its own state.
At least, that is what I got out of the summary.
I suppose it is easier to encode an 1/0 value that survives random mutations than trying to do more complex data on that. Every time a cell reproduces, there's a probability that mutation will happen. These boffins were able to make said value survive these mutations. That's a pretty good achievement for them...
Aliens already did this. What we think is our "junk DNA" is actually links to some sites on the galactic Internet, which we'll be able to decode around the time our technology is good enough to connect to the galactic Internet.
Unfortunately its been a while, so these links are about as useful as links on Earth's Internet to geocities and myspace are today.
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... but there is no usable *IT* technology here, probably never will be. In terms of genetic technology there is always potential anywhere you can control genetic material; but I really cannot see why "Programmable data storage within the DNA of living cells would seem an incredibly powerful tool for studying cancer, ageing, organismal development and even the natural environment." That just sounds like marketing, rather than science.
If you can use these enzymes to turn off and on an arbitrary bit, then (with further research and understanding of course) it is very logical to think we could identify the DNA code that makes us age (this happens by design to make way for new improved DNA generations) and use the same enzymes to turn the DNA code off for the aging process, or for a type of cancerous cell etc.
this a proof of concept for read/write to DNA the real use will come down the road when we are read writing things we want to change in our DNA (like changing genetic diseases etc)