Scientists Store Entire Textbook In DNA

sciencehabit writes with this mind-boggling bit from Science Magazine: "When it comes to storing information, hard drives don't hold a candle to DNA. Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A mere milligram of the molecule could encode the complete text of every book in the Library of Congress and have plenty of room to spare. All of this has been mostly theoretical—until now. In a new study, researchers stored an entire genetics textbook in less than a picogram of DNA — one trillionth of a gram — an advance that could revolutionize our ability to save data."

Re:Take it one step further

[Dyinobal]

Knowledge but not understanding. I think it is important to remember that those are two different things. Still it would be pretty neat.

Re:Take it one step further

[__aaeihw9960]

Knowledge with no understanding = Memorization. I can memorize the parts of the brain with no understanding of how they work. To do anything useful with the information you have to be able to apply it.

Re:Take it one step further

[jader3rd]

Imagine being born with the combined understanding of all of the major fields of science, history, languages, crafts, trades, from day one.

Isn't that what made the goa'uld so evil?

Re:Take it one step further

[Urban Garlic]

> What's it like to have knowledge that you don't understand? That concept doesn't make sense to me.

That would be like if someone told you about a concept, so you knew it existed, but it didn't make sense to you.