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DNA used as rewritable data storage in cells
- christianbryant 14y agoI wonder what the equivalent of "rm -rf /" is in that environment? :)
- kijin 14y agoProbably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis
- andrewflnr 14y agoThat'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.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jes5199 14y agois there any evidence or possibility that this is actually done in biology already? If DNA is writable, then cells have a Von Neumann architecture!
- christianbryant 14y agoGoogling keywords like non-coding RNA, reverse transcriptase, and epigenetics suggests that even further back than this article, this was suspected to be the case.
- mbreese 14y agoThis 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.
- dlitz 14y agoSo, 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!
- jnsaff2 14y agoJoe Davis has been encoding data into DNA for some time. http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w03/davis_j_ars_elec.htm http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Davis_(artist) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Davis_(artist)
- elmindreda 14y agoObligatory Dresden Codak link: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/ http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/