SCIENTISTS STORE OK GO MUSIC VIDEO ON STRAND OF DNA

Microsoft and the University of Washington announced a storage breakthrough on Thursday, reporting that they had managed to store a high definition OK Go music video “This Too Shall Pass” from 2010, as well as 100 books and Crop Trust’s seed database on some DNA strands. (“This Too Shall Pass” was their giant Rube Goldberg machine video.) Storing data on synthetic DNA is not new, but 200 MB is a huge leap from the most recent DNA storage record of just 22 MB. “It’s a thousand times bigger than we had done last year. Just demonstrating that we can scale our methods … was really important,” said lead researcher Luis Ceze, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. To make the data readable, researchers use a DNA manipulation technique known as polymerase chain reaction, which amplifies DNA strands for other research. This enables them to take a sample, amplify it and re-sequence the DNA, convert it back into bits and read it into specially coded RAM.
* Wow. That wasn’t at all like I imagined you would play back DNA.
* When you start talking videos and DNA, I’m thinking something completely different.
* I’m confused. Does this mean the song is alive now? Can it have babies?
* The song part is cool, but storing a seed database? That ROCKS!
* If these scientists think 200 MB is a thousand times bigger than 22 MB, they need some better scientists.
* Do the researchers ever think about, you know, getting away from the lab once in awhile, maybe just to clear their heads and ask, “What the hell are we doing?”
* If only there was a phrase that described the shock of the future.
* Polymerase chain reaction? I thought that was a porno move.
* At least they no longer bother to say, “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe.”
* Wait ’til you have this music video in your kid’s DNA. Then we’ll know how safe it was.