In 2007, a team at Japan's Keio University said they had successfully encoded the equation that represents Einstein's theory of relativity, E=MC2, in the DNA of a common soil bacterium.
They pointed out that because bacteria constantly reproduce, a group of the single-celled organisms could store a piece of information for thousands of years.
But the Hong Kong researchers have leapt beyond this early step, developing methods to store more complex data and starting to overcome practical problems which have lent weight to sceptics who see the method as science fiction.
The group has developed a method of compressing data, splitting it into chunks and distributing it between different bacterial cells, which helps to overcome limits on storage capacity. They are also able to "map" the DNA so information can be easily located.
This opens up the way to storing not only text, but images, music, and even video within cells.
As a storage method it is extremely compact -- because each cell is minuscule, the group says that one gram of bacteria could store the same amount of information as 450 2,000 gigabyte hard disks.
They have also developed a three-tier security fence to encode the data, which may come as welcome news to US diplomats who have seen their thoughts splashed over the Internet thanks to WikiLeaks.
"Bacteria can't be hacked," points out Allen Yu, another student instructor.
"All kinds of computers are vulnerable to electrical failures or data theft. But bacteria are immune from cyber attacks. You can safeguard the information."
Pretty damned amazing if I say so myself, storing data in bacterial DNA like that. That's nothing short of amazing. I wonder how long it will take to make this technology viable commercially.
Imagine an e. Coli barcterium with the Library of Congress encoded into its DNA. Totally new frontier here for a number of applications.
Insert your own computer virus jokes here, too.
EPIC WIN.
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Testing - been having problems with posting recently.
But, yeah, Bio isn't my game, but I've been hearing about holographic storage and quantum computing and whatnot. Neat theory, but practical apps are still 'in the future'. So, I'll wait.
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