A DNA of things –
“Just like real rabbits, our rabbit also carries its own blueprint.”
Jennifer Ouellette -Dec , 120319 (******************************************************************************: (UTC UTC) **************
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DNA has four chemical building blocks — adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C) – which constitutes a type of code. Information can be stored in DNA by converting the data from binary code to a base 4 code and assigning it one of the four letters. As Ars’ John Timmerexplained last year
Once a bit of data is translated, it’s chopped up into smaller pieces (usually**************************************** (to bases long) and inserted in between ends that make it easier to copy and sequence. These ends also contain some information where the data resides in the overall storage scheme — ie, these are bytes (to) ***********************************************************************. To restore the data, all the DNA has to be be sequenced, the locational information read, and the DNA sequence decoded. In fact, the DNA needs to be sequenced several times over, since there are errors and a degree of randomness involved in how often any fragment will end up being sequenced.
DNA has significantly higher data density than conventional storage systems. A single gramcan representnearly 1 billion terabytes (1 zettabyte) of data. And it’s a robust medium: the stored data can be preserved for long periods of time — decades, or even centuries. But using DNA for data storage also presents some imposing challenges. For instance, storing and retrieving data from DNA usually takes a significant amount of time, given all the sequencing required. And our ability to synthesize DNA still has a long way to go before it becomes a practical data storage medium.
********************************************************************************** Enlarge******************************** /A 3D-printed plastic rabbit, aka the Stanford Bunny. The plastic contains DNA molecules in which the printing instructions have been encoded.
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