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THE MOTIVE No data-storage method is foolproof. Bacteria, however, have been passing genetic information from one generation to the next for at least 3 billion years, and they will most likely still be reproducing when humans are long gone. If we could encode information in their genomes, it would be preserved and replicated in perpetuity. That’s what molecular biologists in Japan propose, at least.

They have backed their argument by inserting Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², plus its year of publication, 1905, into the DNA of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. This is more than a clever stunt, the researchers insist.

Biotech companies could conceivably patent or copyright genetically modified organisms by encoding a brand name within the newly created creature’s genetic code.

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OSC, is there anything you don't know about the future?
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
I hate where this might go.
 

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Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
 
I don't like the idea of being able to patent something by sticking in a brand name. I'm quite uncomfortable with many of the biology-related patents. Additionally, I doubt that a genome is really the best place to store information of that sort given the possibility of mutation. If the inserted code doesn't do anything, there will be no selective pressures to keep it the same.
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 

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If we could encode information in their genomes, it would be preserved and replicated in perpetuity.

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Or is the idea to create large living computers?

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Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
What they need to do is encode some sort of checksum into the bacteria so that if the data part mutates, it triggers a gene which is fatal. That way, only bacterium with unmutated data sections survive.

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That's an interesting idea. Now I'm wondering how such a bacterium might be engineered. You could probably modify some of the proteins in the error-checking machinery, which normally detects and corrects mutations that occur during DNA replication, to instead induce cell death. But those errors would have been noticed and corrected under normal circumstances anyway, so you're really just killing a bunch of cells unnecessarily, while the errors that would slip past the normal error-checker would still slip by our killer error-checker.

Hmmmm.
 

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Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Would that work? What you're describing sounds kind of like the apoptosis mechanism for preventing cells from going cancerous. The thing is, that mechanism only provides a benefit to us multicellular organisms since if our cells mutate, the organism dies.

Such a mechanism in bacteria should be under selective pressure to be "removed" since not only does it provide no benefit, it would actually kill cells that have a working copy. Unless bacteria actually have an equivalent system already that does benefit them and you could maybe "piggy-back" on it?

Just a guess.
 

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Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
 
A couple of points, 1) nothing is stopping you from putting hundreds of copies in. 2) You would without question use a data expanding encoding for data integrity purposes. Similar to whats on a CD, but probably with more expansion (Since, reading from DNA will always be slow, better get it right.)

I think the linked article is somewhat misleading about the storage density of DNA as well.
 

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Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
 
Depending on how much data you want to store, it could very well be impossible to put hundreds of copies of it in. The amount of data they said that could be put into on bacterium wasn't very much.

To keep the bacteria from mutating so that the Self Destruct On Data Corruption (SDODC) program gets nullified, you could put multiple SDODCs in, checking each other. Who watches the watchmen indeed.
 

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Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
 
Interesting stuff.

I remember the same guy responsible for the florescent bunny later translated a passage from Genesis into Morse, and then translated that into DNA. Then he hit it with UV light and translated it back into English.

--j_k
 

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Posted by Tristan (Member # 1670) on :
 
Fast-forward through world war III, a 3 000 year post-apocalypse period, the second dark ages, the re-renaisance period, to the emergence of the second scientific period. Argaprop Behe, a scientist and great believer in the Devine Panda, is looking into his electron microscope:

"Heureka! Proof of the Devine Panda! There's no way this could have evolved naturally. Let's see them sceptics trying to keep THIS out of the text books!"
 

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Posted by Zhil (Member # 10504) on :
 
Apparently, the Devine Panda's True Name is Microsoft, Inc. And He created bacterium!

All hail Microsoft, Inc!
 

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Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
 
Well, if you were able to engineer the bacteria such that the message encoded a vital protein that was extremely sensitive to changes in amino acid sequence, I suppose that would work as a kill switch in case of mutation.

I have absolutely no clue how you could go about doing it, though. I suppose you could simply try to enhance the error-checking mechanisms in the DNA replication system of the organism. Or you could cause the organism to live together in colonies, and use the message to make a signaling system. If the bacterium is not displaying the correct molecule on its surface, the other bacteria kill it.

It's pretty impressive how well certain proteins are conserved, though. Some of the electron transport chains, for example. They play an extremely vital role, so they don't tend to change as quickly as some other proteins.
 

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