A, T, G and C, they are adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine, is the ones and zeros of living beings. Unlike the code stored in silicon, in DNA data will not disintegrate for thousands of years. And DNA can store much more data — one gram of DNA can hold a billion terabytes of data. For comparison, the popular hard disks have a capacity of 1 TB.
Scientists from ETH Zurich have figured out how to save one of the greatest works of mankind in a safe environment DNA: the epic albo Massive Attack called Mezzanine, which was released 20 years ago. A masterpiece of British trip-hop Duo now lives in 5000 tiny glass beads that were recorded nearly a million of short DNA chains.
To accommodate the data in strands of DNA, they first need to translate from binary code (0 and 1) of four DNA bases (A, T, G, C). Then scientists need to synthesize DNA molecules (this is a very complex process) to perfectly preserve this sequence. Then the sequences fit into these molecules. After dewatering and stored in the right conditions, these molecules can live for thousands of years.
Scientists are not the first time save digital files in DNA; the work of Swiss scientists ranked second in the list of the largest stored in DNA files (the first place is Microsoft – its scientists were able to fit a video of the band OK Go! in DNA).
Unfortunately, this process is very slow and very expensive. But if to encode in the DNA of all the masterpieces of humanity, we ensure that future generations of cyber-humanoids will be able to enjoy great music and watch the best vidosic.
Scientists have recorded one of the best albums of 1998… DNA
Ilya Hel