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Thread: Microsoft Stores 200MB of Data on Strands of DNA

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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Microsoft Stores 200MB of Data on Strands of DNA

    Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington have stored a record 200 megabytes of data on strands of DNA.

    Digital versions of art (including a high-def OK Go! video), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 100-plus languages, the top 100 Project Gutenberg books, and nonprofit Crop Trust's seed database are now saved in deoxyribonucleic acid.

    The "early but important milestone" managed to encode mass amounts of data onto synthetic DNA, which occupied test tube space "much smaller than the tip of a pencil," according to Douglas Carmean, Microsoft's partner architect overseeing the project.

    "This of the amount of data in a big data center compressed into a few sugar cubes. Or all the publicly accessible data on the Internet slipped into a shoebox," Redmond said in a blog post. "That is the promise of DNA storage—once scientists are able to scale the technology and overcome a series of technical hurdles."

    The cloud, though a popular solution among many home and business users, can't possibly hold all the information in the growing world. According to Microsoft, DNA could be the answer. Compact and durable, genetic codes will always be current.

    "As long as there is DNA-based life on the planet, we'll be interested in reading it," Karin Strauss, principal Microsoft researcher on the project, said in a statement. "So it's eternally relevant."

    To store digital data (like the OK Go! music video), information is first translated from 0s and 1s into the "letters" that make up a DNA strand: (A)denine, (C)ytosine, (G)uanine, and (T)hymine. Project partner Twist Bioscience translates those electronic letters into molecules and sends them back in a test tube.

    "You can barely see what's in it," Strauss said. "It looks like a little bit of salt was dried on the bottom."

    From there, the team users a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to multiply the strands it wants to recover, then takes a sample, sequences or decodes the DNA, and runs error correction computations.

    Sounds simple enough, right?

    Just don't expect to open a gene farm in your basement any time soon. While the biotechnology industry is making great strides, DNA as a viable archival technology is still years away

    http://www.pcmag.com/news/345934/mic...B2A8A2A65D8431

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Maybe the Lord will have to return during the next few centuries, before they saturate the world with a nano-engineered virus that will reprogram anyone who breathes into waking up as a god hating, raging atheist. Or worse. People go on and on about physical transhumanism but mind control in the hands of a totalitarian regime is a far more dangerous and equally probable future. At the very least the version where every new human being is engineered to naturally behave and think like that and then it's just a matter of how long it takes before the previous generation is gone.

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    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    Is the next step to program human DNA with certain information and implant it into an egg and create some kind of super intelligence or super soldier???

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    What I'm describing is a virus that will automatically spread all over the globe and automatically reprogram all human dna. Once the virus is unleashed there will no way of stopping it. This is completely within the possibilities of nano technology.

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    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    What I'm describing is a virus that will automatically spread all over the globe and automatically reprogram all human dna. Once the virus is unleashed there will no way of stopping it. This is completely within the possibilities of nano technology.
    Right. I was posting when you posted so I didn't see yours till mine came up. My thought wasn't directed at you. It was just what I was imagining could happen with info implanted in human DNA. It's like a sci-fi movie.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Ok, never mind that.

    With nano technology they are afraid that they might create a self replicating particle that will keep replicating until it has eaten up the entire globe and there is no life left whatsoever. They could also do this on purpose just with a more specific goal. As compared to a nuclear holocaust, this scenario wouldnt have any survivors. Or leave any normal people, with the purposeful version.

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    Frozen Chosen A.J.'s Avatar
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    Whatever they do with it, it's not going to be good.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    People used to worry about man sized robots becoming evil and seeing humans as expendable and then there would be robot wars. But what should one do when there are one quintillion nano particles the size of a virus, they are all intent on destruction and replication and there is no way of telling where they all are ? Kill 99% and the remaining 1% will soon have replicated back into the original number. Simply unstoppable.

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