Meet the Data-Storing Bacteria Bacteria have been at the
forefront of news lately, and not just for causing illness. For
instance, NASA discovered bacteria in California that dines out
on arsenic, and researchers figured out how to make bacteria
play Sudoku. However, scientists are now testing the capability
of storing electronic data in E.coli. According to Cambridge
University’s student magazine BlueSci, researchers from the
University of Hong Kong managed to place 90GB of data into the
DNA of a colony of eighteen E.coli. The data can also be
encrypted by site-specific genetic recombination; a purely
natural process that means data can be jumbled up. Science is
weird. Given that there are apparently around 10 million cells
in a gram of bacteria, and each cell can hold approximately 5GB,
this could lead to some pretty enormous storage capacities.
Plus, different types of cells have stronger radioresistance
than others, meaning the cells--and data in them--would survive
a nuclear blast. However, the discovery