Fergie's Tech Blog

Japanese Researchers Store Data in Bacterial DNA

Ian Williams writes on vnunet.com:

Scientists at a Japanese university have developed a way of using bacterial DNA to store data almost indefinitely.

Researchers from the Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Tokyo have succeeded in creating an artificial DNA containing the data to be preserved.

Each artificial DNA strand can hold up to 100 bits of data and is preserved by making multiple copies of the DNA and inserting the original as well as the identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence.

It is these copies that work as back-ups of the data to counteract natural degradation.

posted by Fergie @ 3/02/2007 11:38:00 AM