Does this work because there is massive redundancy in the DNA soup? So if some strands of part of strands are contaminated, there are 100s or 1000s (millions?) of cloned DNA molecules floating around?<p>Or is a single DNA molecule capable of long term data data storage and retrieval? I realize of course that scientists pull DNA from long dead things all the time, but for example there is of course hundreds of trillions of cells in a large mammal with copies of the DNA.