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stealthdawg t1_j0z1uwn wrote

Reply to comment by SpielbrecherXS in How realistic is “The future of” on Netflix? by alakeya

iirc the idea was storing the data in DNA, not in the plant structure, so-long as the plant has any viable cells the data would be intact, theoretically. DNA is supposedly extremely data-dense.

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Paradox68 t1_j0zde63 wrote

How is this better for protecting your data than a solid metal stick?

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NotShey t1_j0zj5e4 wrote

Hm. Just spit balling, but if you wanted to store data for a really REALLY long time (thousands of years or longer) embedding it in the DNA of a really resilient plant or fungal species is not the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

Has some fairly obvious advantages over a diamond disk or something along those lines, particularly in terms of redundancy.

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Illuminaso t1_j10h56g wrote

DNA is a pretty lossy system though. I mean hell, that's how evolution happens. If you wanted to preserve some data in DNA for thousands of years, when you came back to it it may have evolved into something completely different.

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If you were to store it on a USB stick or a hard drive it would last forever provided it was stored properly.

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NotShey t1_j11hmtx wrote

>DNA is a pretty lossy system though

Depends on the species, and on a time scale of thousands of years, DNA can be very stable compared to most other storage mediums. On a timescale of millions of years everything is pretty lossy.

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Suekru t1_j10m09c wrote

I figured they write it on a plant that could live thousands of years, like a tree. That way they could access the same DNA.

USB sticks, if not plugged in once in a while will eventually lose their data. The time for this is about 10 years or a bit more.

Hard drives might be a better option than a USB stick for long term storage, but they use magnets to store data and eventually they will deteriorate. With that said I have like a 20 year old hard drive that the data on it is still readable, so they can last a while. But I doubt data would be readable after a 100 years. Not impossible, depends on the quality of the drive.

But multiple generation data storage like 1000 years, you’d need to switch the data to a new drive every so often and keep plenty of backups. So the DNA method would be an interesting work around to this problem.

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SpielbrecherXS t1_j0z28vv wrote

Ah. that makes a bit more sense. Bit still unpractical for most purposes, imo

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tvfanatic1337 t1_j0zjczb wrote

It’s practical for a lot of reasons. DNA takes 1000s of years to degrade vs digital devices which constantly have to be replaced every few decades.

It is multithreaded, DNA can be read at any entry point in parallel along the strand.

It’s cheap: every living thing on earth can store DNA, it’s dirt cheap.

It’s compact and dense.

It can be expanded past base 4 to any arbitrary base with synthetic nucleotides.

https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/hello-data-dna-storage/

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