http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212154633.htm
If we can dream it we can do it.
The magic alien crystal that boots up the spaceship?
by CJ | Feb 14, 2015 | Journal | 10 comments
10 Comments
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Ever genome of Earth’s diversity captured. Wow, now there’s a story of a far future.
As I was reading the article, which is entirely too cool, BTW, I thought of the spinning rings in the film version of H. G. Well’s Time Machine with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NRMYUpgyJ8 ) It would be so great if, as ryanrick says, every genome of Earth’s diversity was captured. When we crash the hard drive on this planet, which we seem hell-bent on doing, it would behoove us to have it backed up.
And another question that this article begs, if they can edit out the errors in data storage on the data they encrypted, we can edit out other errors in data — Tay Sachs, phenylketonuria, fragile X, Huntington’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, progeria, to name just a few. We humans better straighten up and fly right. We are on the brink of so many things right now. If we could just get our act together. Sigh.
“A” story of the far future? I can think of half a dozen, right off the top of my head. I wish you’d drop that thought into the ol’ hopper, CJ, and let it percolate a while and see what you come up with. I’d also like to see what Jane could do with it. It’d be interesting if the two of you could do something where your take and her take on it came out as a “twofer” volume.
That’s more than a little exaggeration, given what we know. The reporters have gotten a little carried away with themselves. I am more than a little skeptical! 😉
Frozen mammoth DNA from Siberian permafrost has been very well, if not perfectly, preserved. But it’s only tens of thousands of years old. We know some of the DNA of 30-40 thousand year old H neanderthalensis because modern H sapiens may each have 2-4% of it, but between them all preserve about 20% of the neanderthal genome. Fossil DNA of the earliest hominids, H erectus, hundreds of thousands of years old, is severly degraded. We have some idea of what bits of it was by piecing together fragments and comparing sequences of survivng species. Fossil DNA of millions of years old, not even 65MYA of dinosaurs, is virtually non-existant.
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I wish they’d try with some other molecular structure than DNA. That seems like a risky way to introduce unquantifiable oddness into the DNA of existing lifeforms, and it seems error-prone. What’s needed is something very stable and not connected to biology.
There are very many stories that could be written based on something like that, and some have already.
I recall hearing about ideas on molecular storage for computer data and RAM, back in college in the 80’s, so the idea has been around a while.
They’re quickly approaching the need for smaller memory storage. One issue is that as you get that small, the possibilities for errors and for signal or data jumping, side-effects, get more problematic. But there are likely ways to do it.
My iPad and cell phone already can store quite a lot, whole libraries of audio, video, ebooks. But it still gets crowded. A USB thumb drive (chewing gum stick) similarly holds a lot these days, but video particularly is large.
What happens if we’re able to carry around the sum of all human ebooks, audio, and video in somehting even smaller? Very, very interesting.
A curious question there: If you can store even something as big as a genome in a smaller space, then you can carry around the blueprints to a lifeform, a whole zoo, an ecosystem…a crew…an ark…
Lots and lots of story material in there.
It would certainly be possible to design better error detection into DNA to detect SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms. But nature, evolution, wants there to be a small but definite chance for a miscoding, a mutation, that might produce a more “fit” individual.
The other thing to consider is: the more complex the “machinery” for error detection and correction, the more it “costs” to make work.
Most of the degredation of DNA is environmental. If not subject to environmental action, it lasts longer. Eg, it’s easier to recover from dry Egypt than soggy Florida, easier to recover from a cold cave than a tropic one. It’s ordinary biologic breakdown that causes most of the problem in recovery. YOu still have to contend with stray cosmic rays, etc, or heating from some source.
I quite agree. A millenium, perhaps, given that global warming doesn’t come to Svalbard. But “through storage in low temperatures, such as that found in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is stored at minus 18 degrees Celsius, DNA-encoded information can survive over a million years.” A million years? There’s no evidence that’s anything but hyperbole.
😀 Yeah, and who’s gonna be around in a million years to test their claim? Heheh.
A few millenia would be an impressive time for data storage to last.
Yet we live in an age of “planned obsolescence,” where things are designed ~not~ to last. — I like things that last. Uh, not that I’d expect them to last millennia. But hey, that’s pretty good, if they do.
Pretty wild if you can store a genome on a molecular…nano-disc? Micro-sphere? Huh. Amazing concept. …. And yet it happens in biological organisms.
Golly, better not forget to pay your molecular storage utility bill….