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A Massage To You Rudy

14:54 / 17.01.03

I skim read and failed to understand an article about storing digital information on DNA. Something about encoding information - anything digital, so books, documents, films, music etc. - on the DNA of bacteria. Apparently the copy fidelity is fantastic, but not 100%, and as I understand it, minor corruption fuels evolution.

I know jack about biology, and it's late on a Friday afternoon, so, if bio-storage of information becomes a reality what are the ramifications? Would it be possible to become infected with bacteria carrying the complete works of Throbbing Gristle? Would Naomi Klein's message be distorted if the organism mutated the data? Would No Lego be worth a read?

Wrecks City-Zen

18:35 / 17.01.03

Cute..."No Lego"

I would reallybe interested in that article and any other information on that topic. Would someone please point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

16:36 / 20.01.03

I think there's a thread in the Lab on that.

Part of the potential problems they're anticipating isn't as much that the message will mutate - it's set aside with some sort of tag that's supposed to keep it out of recombination somehow - but that it could potentially act as a mutation in and of itself.

Like the second verse of "It's Only Love" by the Beatles, when translated into DNA, might imbue E. Coli with immunity to all known antibiotics or something like that.

18:31 / 20.01.03

Yeah. But I'd still blame Yoko.

21:11 / 20.01.03

I wonder what you could get if you decoded some unencoded DNA, actually (not knowing exactly how the process works).

What if I've got the US Constitution encoded in me? Or a collection of Basho haiku?

That'd be cool.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:29 / 20.01.03

I'd probably discover I was an Ernest Borgnine film.