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# if youve a few exabits of data storage
you could probably download it through that wire youve got, unless you're wireless, in which case you can download it out of thin air

and having just seen wiki, does anyone know anything about the concept of using DNA as a method of data storage
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 13:46, archived)
# Using DNA as data storage?
Well, it's just a 4 letter alphabet, innit? Encode as appropriate.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 13:48, archived)
# yea but has it been done?
artificially i mean, clearly its done in nature.
also whats the lifetime of a dna molecule, and if it reproduces, what sort of rate would data be corupted at with mutations........

*is feeling curious*
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 13:51, archived)
# i think they're onto that already
they've got biocell that has leant binary so far... i've not heard much about that since
(I helped save b3ta! SkUG >_O i got a couple of stitches in my eyeball... ow, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 13:56, archived)
# got a link?
i wouldnt mind finding out more
*wants to store music in mouldy bread*
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:02, archived)
# haha
(I helped save b3ta! monkdagola but how do you TURN a phrase?, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:12, archived)
# Well......
You've got the amino acid triplet code - i.e there are twenty amino acids, each with a single letter abbreviation.
So you could have a 20 letter alphabet.
e.e. three DNA molecules in a row encode 1 protein: ATG = M
And there are 64 3 letter code combos, 3 of which encode "STOP" so really, there are 21 possible letters.

Lifetime of a DNA molecule....depends on conditions and whether there's nasty proteins around that'll gobble it up, but quite a long time generally.

/BSc Genetics blog
(I helped save b3ta! Jsysco is mostly a lurker, mostly, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:01, archived)
# defining it with amino acids would not be most efficient
with 4 bases, 3 thingys could have 64 combinations, much more than the 20 if you restricted urself to amino acids, unless amino acids was significantly easier to read...
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:05, archived)
# ^ this
Edit: and if you use 4 bases, you can store a byte.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:08, archived)
# wouldnt 64 bits be 8 bytes
not just one, or have i mis-understood you

also it might be better (easier to read/code or something) to stick to two bases, or if not then prehaps to engineer some more bases, and get a higher data density
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:14, archived)
# There are more than 4 bases....
Just some aren't so common, thing slike Xanthine
(I helped save b3ta! Jsysco is mostly a lurker, mostly, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:16, archived)
# *learns*
im afraid im a physicist rather than having gone down the bio route, so i dont know much of this
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:17, archived)
# There's also RNA
But that generally has the half life of a herd of hedgehogs on an autobahn.
(I helped save b3ta! Jsysco is mostly a lurker, mostly, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:19, archived)
# and the public is less aware of it, so it would probably get less funding
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:22, archived)
# True, true.
What's the one beginning with U? (Wiki)... ah yes, uracil, used in RNA instead of thymine. It's been a while since biology :)
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:22, archived)
# I meant 4 instances of some base.
So 4 ^ 4 = 256.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:20, archived)
# oh yes
i made a mistake, 64 wasnt the number of bits, just the number of unique combinations, i must have been somewhere else
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:24, archived)
# Very true
I wasn't thinking outside the box...
In nature, some amino acids have more than one codon, i.e out of the 64 combos, 6 encode Serine...,(linky)
If each of the 64 combos dictacted something unique, you could create a superbeing! 100% fact.

Oooh, both DNA and AA's are easy to sequence, just takes a little while and usually becomes innacurate as length of code increases.
(I helped save b3ta! Jsysco is mostly a lurker, mostly, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:12, archived)
# Bring on the superbeings!
We're due an upgrade :)
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:31, archived)
# evolution says each generation is a little bit upgraded....
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:38, archived)
# but the human race
is stalling evolution with it's life preserving techniques
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:41, archived)
# good point
the same thing is also giving many problems with pensions and the like, it appears there is such a thing as too much health care
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:49, archived)
# I'm not sure we're stalling evolution...
... it's more that we've modified the selective pressures.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:59, archived)
# we're no longer physically evolving
other than getting slightly taller and heavier (not obesity, average weights have been rising for the last two hundred years or so as we've lived healthier lifestyles)
there's a hive evolution occuring in that the species is becoming more intelligent, and probably will be able to manage interplanetary travel if it survives a mass extinction event, but mutants are not surviving instead of those not carrying the mutation, nor are they dying instead of carrying on the mutation.
in short, survival of the fittest no longer applies to individuals of the human race, and hasn't done for a good few hundred years.
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:03, archived)
# I definitely disagree with that.
For instance, I believe there's an allele which is now very common in Africa, which was unknown a few decades ago, which confers a much greater protection against malaria.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:20, archived)
# yes
in the 'developed' world there are less extreem selection processes, the most prevelant diseases, diabetes, heart attack etc, dont typically prevent reproduction, so more resistant genes cant be selected for
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:30, archived)
# that'd be
sickle cell

if you're a carrier of the gene then you're protected against malaria, however if you've got two copies of it you've got an incredibly painful (and terminal if i remember correctly) blood disease, it's not a great mutation to have.

although, i get the point that the developing world isn't benefiting from the advancement of the human race, but i'd say that aid agencies and civil wars are still preventing evolution
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:41, archived)
# No, it's not sickle cell.
That's been around for a long time. There's a new allele that's more effective against malaria and has no known bad side effect.

Edit: oh, and the blood disease you refer to is sickle cell anaemia.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 17:20, archived)
# Mutation rate varies according to environmental conditions.
I also believe that in a living cell some bits of DNA have evolved to be more (or less) prone to mutation, according to whether variation in thoses areas helps survival or not.

I think it has been done artificially in an experimental way, but the data rate (encoding / decoding) is terrible because it's pretty much manual.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:07, archived)
# it would be so beautiful if it could be made to work
a sort of back to roots thing
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:09, archived)
# They are trying :)
I think the main interesting thing is that it would (apparently) give a higher density of data storage than current solid state technologies. That might not be true by the time they make it practical, though....
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:11, archived)
# from wiki:
"1.8E22 bits (2.25 zettaoctets) – amount of information which can be stored in 1 gram of DNA", sounds hard to beat to me
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:16, archived)
# '1.8E22'?
whoever wrote that article needs to learn to right in standard form:
1.8x1022
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:44, archived)
# it was written like that
but when i pasted it, it lost the formatting, and i couldnt be bothered to add it back in, since most people know what it means anyway
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:46, archived)
# ah reet
fair enough, thought some cunt at wikipaedia had well, been a cunt at wikipaedia.

/hates wikipaedia blog
(cs192 is sucking on a Koala at, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:49, archived)
# It's a lot...
But bases are reasonably sized molecules, not to mention the sugar phosphate 'scaffolding'; it's not totally unreasonable to imagine you could build something which handled the same amount of data with fewer atoms; or trim some of the extra stuff away, start substituting other atoms, or use other base modifications (e.g. methylation, glycosylation, I think) to increase data density.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:29, archived)
# true
i guess one of the denseist you could get is a lattic of e.g a metal with two atoms, with the atom at the lattice point dictating the 1 or zero.

use Li/Na, one mole~10gms, which would give Nabits (Na= avagadros number)=~10E22B/gm, which is about the same, which makes me suspect that wiki may be lieing
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 14:37, archived)
# That's bits stored per gram, which might be true.
Carbon and hydrogen atoms are lighter than sodium and lithium respectively....
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:15, archived)
# yes but dna has got lots of them per bit of data
plus the suger phosphate back-bone
(I helped save b3ta! wjh31, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:18, archived)
# True.
(Pie of Meat ___°¬¯O¯____\o/_____/\_,____Y¯¯Y, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 15:21, archived)
# My wireless what?

/pedant blog
(I helped save b3ta! Lazlo Woodbine Panowie!, Sun 3 Jun 2007, 13:57, archived)