Researchers store information in DNA

The human genome consists of the equivalent of approximately 750 megabytes of data – a significant amount of storage space. However, only about three percent of DNA goes into composing the more than 22,000 genes that make us what we are. The remaining 97 percent leaves plenty of room to encode information in a genome, allowing the information to be preserved and replicated in perpetuity.

This is pretty fascinating... Imagine the amount of data that you could store in just a drop of your blood/dna. these are exciting times in deed

No more $100 HDD for me!

www.newsroom.ucr.edu...

Hmmm. I wonder if this can/will be used to brand us as stock animals? Honestly, what is the purpose of this technology? I guess "half off sale" stickers will be a thing of the past. Although, I suppose you could encode that into the DNA as well and have it as a timed event. Just thinking out loud, here.

Reading into this a bit futher i think it would be more like a flash drive or something equivelent with dna of a bacteria or fungi or something that is stored with information instead of a persons own blood.

then again if it is stored by our own blood... would people have to be cremeated from now on to destroy the information?

I would not be that sure that the junk DNA is really that "junk"

Originally posted by tevis69
then again if it is stored by our own blood... would people have to be cremeated from now on to destroy the information?

If all your cells occupy this information, yes.

Its a neat way to hide things from everyone, and I could see future couriers carrying DNA-based information (Like imdb.com...]Johnny Mnemonic). But in practice I actually don't believe this is viable solution. Its not *that* hard to add information to ones genome, the problem is removing it.

The question needs to be is there already a message encoded in our DNA from a race of ET's.

Forget waiting for ET to call -- the most likely place to find an alien message is in our DNA, according to an expert in Australia.

Professor Paul Davies, from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, believes a cosmic greeting card could have been left in every human cell.

The coded message would only be discovered once the human race had the technology to read and understand it.

Scientists have recently discovered large sequences of "junk" DNA that contain no genes and appears to be very stable

"If ET has put a message into terrestrial organisms, this is surely where to look," said Davies.

www.mg.co.za.../breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news&articleid=134442

I calculate that means we are actually written with 22.5 MB of data.
That seems like some mighty elegant programming. Astonishingly compact if it is accurate. but I doubt it is that simple. I believe the Genes are more akin to Executable Binary Files. Than seperate instructions. That would be a lot of .exe files 23040 seperate programs.