3 ms·

A question about hype since I know almost nothing about biology; Is this possible? - http://microfabricator.com/articles/view/id/538989659aad9d533400009b/a-new

• a_bonobo 12y ago
  Any kind of information has been successfully stored in bacteria (one example: [1]), so it should be possible, but not easy to get that information to another planet, especially since the human genome is much bigger than what we can currently store in bacteria. The human genome is about 3.2 gigabasepairs, a bacterial artificial chromosome can carry around 300 kilobasepairs, so you'd need quite a few of these. The actual '3D printing' is still far from possible, but not impossible. We can synthesize DNA, but we can't synthesize bacteria (even though we now can make artificial bacteria, but these are based on already existing bacteria from which the DNA has been removed [2]). Once we can synthesize bacteria we can go to bigger things like fungi, other animals, humans. I'd give it 100-200 years. [1] http://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume69/number19/12083-8322 http://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume69/number19/12083-8... [2] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.253.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.253.ht...