Computer and Technology | Ubuntu Linux | Web Development

» Follow me on Twitter

Yes, they did it!  Scientists managed to store data in bacteria and if you think nanotechnology is cool then I’m sure you wanna check this out. Scientists at Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus developed a technique that allows data to be added to the genome of common bacteria.

Researchers said that upto 100 bits - that’s about 12 bytes - can be stored on each organism and they were even successful in storing the phrase “e=mc2 1905″ to the DNA of a common soil bacteria. The storage capacity may be little if you think of just a single organism but try to imagine the billions of bacteria all over the globe. A megabyte of data can be stored in only about 84,000 organisms.

The better part of this technique is that bacteria replicate themselves and when they do, they also replicate the data that was attached to them. Now this is self-replicating multiple backup systems - talk about redundancy! No more need to worry if you’re data was lost.

So what are the possible uses?  One thing that can be done is to store special markers to identify legitimate versions of pharmaceuticals.  Another use would be to use these bacteria in building a self-sustaining archival system.  Thing is, whenever data can be stored, you can start counting on bacteria and this particular method in the future.  After all, who ever thought 100 years ago that data can be stored in hard drives, CDs, and chips?

I can’t wait to buy my first 500GB backup drive made from common bacteria.

This article was derived from LiveScience.com

» Follow me on Twitter