Hong Kong Team Stores 90GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria 164
Bananana writes "A research team out of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found a way to do data encryption and storage with bacteria. The project is called 'Bioencryption,' and their presentation (as a PDF file) is here."
Funny (Score:3, Informative)
I know it's pedantic, buuut... (Score:2, Informative)
"The term bateria means “drum kit” in Portuguese and Spanish." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateria [wikipedia.org]
Does that mean we have to samba every time we access data?
Actually, that sounds kinda fun.
They stored about 100 bytes. (Score:4, Informative)
What they actually did was to store about 100 bytes. This may be useful for putting copyright information into genetically engineered organisms. As a method of bulk data storage, though, it leaves much to be desired.
DNA synthesis costs about $0.29 per base pair. [google.com] Sequencing is a bit cheaper, but you currently get less than 1000 base pairs sequenced per run. Reading and writing takes a room of expensive wet lab gear, and hours to days.
Re:Virus? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Informative)
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
That's not the star trek reference that jumped into my mind.
I was thinking of these [memory-alpha.org].
900,000 GB of Data In 1g of Bacteria (Score:2, Informative)