Salmon DNA Used In Data Storage Device 51
Zothecula writes "Scientists from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a 'write-once-read-many-times' (WORM) memory device that combines electrodes, silver nanoparticles, and salmon DNA. While the current device is simply a proof-of-concept model, the researchers have stated that DNA could turn out to be a less expensive alternative to traditional inorganic materials such as silicon."
Um... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds fishy!
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As they age, what will they smell like?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
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If you can't find your disk drive, look upstream.
My eyes cross at how one is going to "spawn" a "backup."
I'm sorry, that thought was just wrong, and its my fault.
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You don't. Salmon die after spawning. So your spawned backup becomes your new primary storage.
(Incidentally, lazy bald eagles rely on this phenomenon to feed - they "catch" the salmon after they've spawned and eat the carcass. Saves them having to hunt and grab live ones.)
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Re:Um... (Score:4, Funny)
(Incidentally, lazy bald eagles rely on this phenomenon to feed - they "catch" the salmon after they've spawned and eat the carcass. Saves them having to hunt and grab live ones.)
Would that qualify as spawn camping?
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Sounds fishy!
Trout slap!
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Cod's more economical.
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Unlimited Upstream bandwith?
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Shame. (Score:2)
Re:Shame. (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense.
Computers with tuna-based storage can't be overclocked.
Everyone knows you can tuna fish, but you can't tuna computer.
On the other hand, there are rumors of the unreliability of salmon-based information storage. [douglasadams.com]
cheaper, but more stable? (Score:4, Funny)
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It will be very unstable if there is a cat nearby.
fish and WORMs (Score:5, Funny)
well of course you'd use WORMs with fish....
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I guess they did this exclusively for the pun.
Normally you call write once read many "ROM".
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not strictly true, actually--WORM [wikipedia.org] is a perfectly valid concept in data storage. roughly speaking, i'd say the difference is in whether users are meant to be the ones doing the "write once" part.
Price of salmon (Score:4, Insightful)
combines electrodes, silver nanoparticles, and salmon DNA. ... DNA could turn out to be a less expensive alternative to traditional inorganic materials such as silicon.
could turn out = Weasel words. After I arrive at home, it could turn out that space aliens have swapped my wife out for a supermodel as part of an alien sociology research study regarding recreational human reproductive activities, but I'm thinking its unlikely.
Have you seen the price of salmon? I had a nice grilled slab last night wrapped in some herb leaves and lemon juice. I could buy quite the stack of I2C flash memory chips for that price. I'm not thinking that the salmon-flashdrive equivalent of the HHGTTG babel-fish is necessarily going to be profitable. And carrying around a dead fish with firefox installed on it sounds like some Stross Laundry series plot.
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Have you counted how many DNAs in one pound of Salmon?
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I donno man. Smallest feature size I've heard for flash is 19 nm and I'm sure it'll continue to drop. DNA single nucleotide unit length aka pitch is about a third of a nm and has not shrunk at all in a couple billion years for some basic chemistry reasons.
Lets say you get flash down to 5 nm and shove 20 bits worth of multiple levels (basically analog storage with A/D and D/A interface). This in unrealistic at this time, but then again, DNA storage is unrealistic at this time. That flash data density wou
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This isn't limited to salmon DNA and they don't have to raise a whole salmon to get the DNA.
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It's not a weasel word, it's a reflection that the future isn't yet known. If we already knew the answer what would be the point of speculating on it in the first place?
I realize that there are lots of people out there that have a pathological hatred of qualifiers, but they do serve a purpose and that's to inform the reader that there is uncertainty. And ideally they should give some indication about the reliability of the prediction.
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A hunk of Salmon ultimately would be unnecessary. Not lot of salmon meat is needed, just an initial sample of salmon DNA and an understanding of PCR (and a lab to utilize it) to produce the DNA en masse; more to the point, not a lot of DNA would be needed I think to store much information on some chip.
Yippy! (Score:2)
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That makes me eel...
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If I haddock couple bucks I'd invest. Is sounds like a great oppor-tuna-ty
Maybe so... (Score:3)
Still a ways to go.... (Score:3)
30 minutes is good in the lab, but in reality, we need WORM technologies to be readable for a lot longer than the stated 10^5 seconds. We need readability in decades or centuries for the underlying medium, and that is before we slap the ECC layer on top to deal with bad sectors/blocks and such.
What might complement this technology would be developing a way to cause the DNA to polymerize (similar to how organic tissue is preserved in "Bodies: The Exhibition"), so once it is written, it stays in that form for a far longer period of time.
It's time to shop shop shop (Score:2)
It's 3 o'clock and so it's time to shop shop shop.
Say, have you ever sat at your computer and had a thought of eating something while watching the porn? Has FBI ever storm your house to get you and your computer and have you thought to yourself: Dammit, I wish I could just eat that harddrive to prevent the agents from finding my treasured information? Well NOW YOU CAN!
Our latest line of products includes edible salmon drives, they will not only store your most 'important' data securely, but they taste li
Next stop: game pods! (Score:2)
But does it scale well? (Score:4, Funny)
nt
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+1, Sir.....+1.... ...and now even the salmon are wondering if it was a good idea to swim up-stream, because they're being made to come on shore whether they want to or not.
It has a very unique search function! (Score:1)
>Go Fish.
Fish DNA? (Score:1)
Don't we already have caviar hard disks?
So what this means.... (Score:1)
...is that if you're tired of your mother wondering if you're gay (or any friend or family member for that matter)....just buy a spindle of S-CDR's and leave them in the sun for a week.
"My my my...it smells like sex in here"
Salmon memory eh? (Score:1)
Suddenly an Apple doesn't sound that bad...given the choice.
How can alternative materials be cheaper than Si? (Score:1)
We will all remember (Score:1)
Western Digital (Score:1)
Western Digital has been using this tech for years...
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=100 [wdc.com]
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