Computer breakthrough: Code of life becomes databank

Google - AFP, Richard Ingham (AFP), 23 January 2013

A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that
can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, scientists said 
(AFP/File)

PARIS, France — Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.

A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.

The contents are "read" by sequencing the DNA -- as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on -- and turning it back into computer code.

"We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it," said Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge.

"It's also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy."

DNA is the famous double helix of compounds -- a long, coiled molecular "ladder" comprising four chemical rungs, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, which team up in pairs. C teams up with G, and T teams up with A.

The letter sequence comprises the genome, or the chemical blueprint for making and sustaining life. Human DNA has more than three billion letters, coiled into packages of 24 chromosomes.

The project entails taking data in the form of zeros and 1s in computing's binary code, and transcribing it into "Base-3" code, which uses zeros, 1s and 2s.

The data is transcribed for a second time into DNA code, which is based on the A, C, G and T. A block of five letters is used for a single binary digit.

The letters are then turned into molecules, using lab-dish chemicals.

The work does not entail using any living DNA, nor does it seek to create any life form and in fact the man-made code would be quite useless in anything biological, the researchers said.

"We have absolutely no intention of messing with life," said Goldman.

Only short strings of DNA can be made, which means the message has to be chopped up into small sections of 117 letters, each attached to a tiny address tag, rather like packet-switching in Internet data, which enables data to be reassembled.

To prove their concept, the team encoded an MP3 recording of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech; a digital photo of their lab; a PDF of the landmark study in 1953 that described the structure of DNA; a file of all of Shakespeare's sonnets; and a document that describes the data storage technique.

"We downloaded the files from the Web and used them to synthesise hundreds of thousands of pieces of DNA. The result looks like a tiny piece of dust," said Emily Leproust of Agilent, a US biotech company that took the digital data and used it to synthesise molecules of DNA in the lab.

Agilent then mailed the sample back across the Atlantic to the EBI, where the researchers soaked the DNA in water to reconstitute it and used standard sequencing machines to unravel the code. They recovered and read the files with 100-percent accuracy.

The work follows a big step last year when scientists at Harvard announced they had stored 700 terabytes of data -- enough for around 70,000 movies -- in a gram of DNA.

The new method eliminates the risk of error when the DNA is read, say the researchers, whose work appears in the journal Nature.

"We figured, let's break up the code into lots of overlapping fragments going in both directions, with indexing information showing where each fragment belongs in the overall code, and make a coding scheme that doesn't allow repeats," said co-author Ewan Birney.

"That way, you would have to have the same error on four different fragments for it to fail, and that would be very rare."

Data is accumulating massively around the world, and storing it is a headache. Magnetic and optical discs are voluminous, need to be kept in cool, dry conditions and are prone to decay.

"The only limit (for DNA storage) is the cost," said Birney.

Sequencing and reading the DNA takes a couple of weeks with present technology, so it is not suitable for jobs needing instant data retrieval.

Instead, it would be appropriate for data that would be stored for between 500 and 5,000 years, such as a doomsday encyclopaedia of knowledge and culture.

But on current trends, sequencing costs could fall by a factor of 20 within a decade, making DNA storage economically feasible for timeframes of less than 50 years, the authors claim.

Related Articles:

DNA 'perfect for digital storage'

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

'Quadruple helix' DNA seen in human cells


"The Quantum Factor" – Apr 10, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Galaxies, Universe, Intelligent design, Benevolent design, Aliens, Nikola Tesla (Quantum energy), Inter-Planetary Travel, DNA, Genes, Stem Cells, Cells, Rejuvenation, Shift of Human Consciousness, Spontaneous Remission, Religion, Dictators, Africa, China, Nuclear Power, Sustainable Development, Animals, Global Unity.. etc.) - (Text Version)

"..... DNA - A Quantum Force 

Now let me take you to the very small. Over a decade ago, Vladimir Poponin, a Russian scientist, used light in an experiment with one molecule of DNA. Through this experiment, he discovered a multidimensional field around DNA. Light patterned itself into a mathematical equation [sine wave] when DNA was present. He discovered that DNA had a quantum field. Not only that, it was a quantum field somehow filled with information. How else could the field pattern light into a sine wave? Now, this came from a quantum biologist, not Kryon. Yet there are many who doubt this experiment ever happened, since it shows something that no Human expected. There are those who simply don't wish to look at the fact that real quantum biologists did a real experiment! They chose to relegate all that information to the new age and not to science. It's always interesting what Humans do with science, isn't it? If it doesn't fit the 3D model of their reality, then they deny it exists.

When the full Human genome was transcribed, every single chemical in it was seen. The numbers are shocking, for in a molecule that is so small you cannot see it without an electron microscope, there are more than 3 billion chemicals! The double helix is more complex than you know. This molecule is small enough to be qualified to be in a quantum state, and Vladimir Poponin showed that it actually had a field around it, even a single DNA molecule.

Those who did the Human Genome Project wanted to know how the 3 billion chemicals of DNA create more than 26,000 genes of the Human body. By the way, there are more genes than that, but I'm using the scientists' numbers, not mine. So this is what they were interested in. They did not see DNA in a quantum state. They were not looking for that, even though the very science of DNA shouts with logic that it has to be quantum. They weren't looking for that. Instead, they counted chemicals and looked for codes, and they found them in a very odd arrangement.

They discovered that of the 3 billion chemicals in the DNA double helix, all the genes were being created in the protein-encoded parts of DNA. Three and a half percent of DNA was creating all the genes. More than 90% of the chemical makeup of DNA seemed to be random. It did absolutely nothing - that they could see or understand. Even to this day, science does not see the obvious, that the 90% is quantum and the 3.5% is linear.

Today, your quantum physicists are often dealing with ten dimensions plus time (11 dimensions) in the most popular kind of multi-dimensional physics, string theory. If you began to ask them about what this all looks like, they would say the words, "chaos" and "random patterning." For this is the way that quantum fields work. They are filled with potentials instead of absolutes, and they vary depending on many factors... including Human consciousness. Someday there will be the realization there is a strong possibility that DNA, although a biological molecule, is in a quantum state. This will break the rules of "size" in a quantum state. For it actually is "mostly quantum," and even affects the spin of the atoms that enter its field. Then the next obvious question will occur: "What information is in the ninety percent of DNA that is quantum?"

Now we get to the core truth, don't we? So I will tell you. The ninety percent of DNA which is quantum, is filled with information, both esoteric and timeless. It is a quantum blueprint for everything you are and have been since you arrived on the planet the first time. DNA contains instruction sets for your life; everything from your full Akashic Record - every single lifetime you have had - to the benevolent creator's fingerprint within the seeds of creation itself. Every single talent you ever had is there, even if you don't have any of those today... the record is there. Every predisposition of weakness and strength are there. Biologically, every single instruction to every single stem cell is there.

Did you ever wonder where stem cells get their "information" to make the Human Being? It's in the 90% of your DNA, and it's all quantum. Why do some quantum DNA contain instructions to create weaker bodies? Why is it that some predispositions for disease are there? Now I'm giving you this information so that you will understand something that is coming next... perhaps the most important biological attribute ever presented. ..."