IMAGINE having a 鈥渓iving鈥� data storage system that constantly renews itself, keeping the data safe for aeons. A team in Japan has raised the possibility by loading live bacteria with artificial DNA sequences that encode data.
Because the data is passed on with the bacteria鈥檚 own DNA, it will survive indefinitely provided the colony is kept alive. 鈥淚nformation storage using DNA will probably be robust for more than a million years,鈥� says Ohashi Yoshiaki, head of the team at Keio University in Yamagata.
He and his colleagues turned the message 鈥�E = mc2 1905!鈥� into binary code written in DNA base pairs, then inserted it into thousands of Bacillus subtilis, a common soil bacterium. For extra security, the team encoded the message in four distinct DNA sequences. (Biotechnology Progress, DOI: 10.1021/bp060261y).
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