I was quite intrigued by Kurt D. Bollacker’s recent column, “Avoiding a Digital Dark Age” (March–April). The article pointed out two substantial shortcomings in storing information digitally. First, a single error in a digital recording can have rather dramatic effects. Thus, one needs not only to continually back up and copy digital information but also to do this in an error-correcting fashion. Second, when copying digital information, one has to be mindful that computer formats keep changing. It is important to keep current with formats and remain backwards compatible.
I would like to propose a somewhat whimsical suggestion for overcoming these two issues. Perhaps we could encode digital information that we wish to preserve in the DNA of bacteria—more specifically, in the regions between genes. Note, first of all, that the information would be recorded in a most fundamental and universal format, the natural DNA code of A, G, C and T. Secondly, because bacteria naturally replicate, backups of the information would be made in an error- correcting fashion using DNA polymerase. Although this copying is subject to some random mutation that evades correction, we could increase the fidelity by averaging the “readout” over a population of bacteria, rather than taking it from a single individual.
Published as:
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/3/harness-dna-memory
M Gerstein (2010). "Harness DNA Memory", American Scientist (Mar.-Apr.)
Responding to:
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/avoiding-a-digital-dark-age
COMPUTING SCIENCE
Avoiding a Digital Dark Age
Data longevity depends on both the storage medium and the ability to decipher the information
Kurt D. Bollacker
March-April 2010, Volume 98, Number 2, Page: 106
DOI: 10.1511/2010.83.106
Original Submitted Text:
I was quite intrigued by your recent article, "Avoiding a Digital Dark Age." The article pointed out two substantial shortcomings in storing information digitally. First, a single error in a digital recording can have rather dramatic effects; thus, one needs to not only continually back up and copy digital information but also do this in an error-correcting fashion. Second, when copying digital information, one has to be cognizant of the fact that computer formats are always changing, so it is important to keep current with new formats as well as remain backwards compatible.
I would like to propose a somewhat whimsical suggestion for overcoming these two issues. Perhaps we could encode digital information we wish to preserve in the DNA of bacteria -- more specifically, in the intergenic regions, between genes. Note, first of all, that the information would be recorded in a most fundamental and universal format, the natural DNA code of A, G, C, and Ts. Secondly, because bacteria naturally replicate, the information would be copied over time in an error-correcting fashion using DNA polymerase. (While this copying is, of course, subject to some random mutation, we could increase its fidelity even further by averaging the "readout" over a whole population of bacteria, rather than taking it from just a single individual.)
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