“Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage. A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said. The contents are ‘read’ by sequencing the DNA — as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on — and turning it back into computer code. To prove their concept, the team encoded an MP3 recording of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech; a digital photo of their lab; a PDF; a file of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets; and a document that describes the data storage technique.”
