Scrawling on the floor
A message for all
You’re The Drive: Digital Data Can Now Be Stored In DNA
TPM’s Carl Franzen reports on a rather cyber-punk development in human-computer relations:
Forget saving files to flash drives and cloud servers. Now, digital information can be stored in the DNA of living organisms, thanks to a breakthrough discovery by researchers at Stanford University in California.
A trio of scientists successfully demonstrated the ability to flip the direction of DNA molecules in sample E.coli bacteria in two directions, mimicking the “1s” and “0s” of binary code, which is at the root of all modern computer calculations.
“Essentially, if the DNA section points in one direction, it’s a zero. If it points the other way, it’s a one,” said Pakpoom Subsoontorn, a bioengineering graduate student at Stanford involved in the research, in an article on the Stanford School of Medicine website.
As a result, the researchers were able to get bacteria cells to glow either red or green under ultraviolet light, and were even able to arrange the colors to spell out specific messages in petri dishes holding the bacteria. (Photo above)
(Hear both the practical and imaginative possibilities envisioned by the inventors—check out the full story)
FJP: Woah.
American photographer Mitch Dobrowner has scooped the top prize at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards, picking up the L’Iris d’Or for his series of impressively stormy landscape images.
(via 630blue)
I dreamt last night of foxes
I dreamt last night
Of foxes
In inky black coats
Under crescent moon
I don’t know
Why I dream of foxes
Drilling out their dens
And the dirt
Caught in the moon
Flung on cold ground
Laying new minerals
Trooping out
Warmth and shelter
I recount carving tooth
And glistening saliva
A preys cry
Darkened red muzzles
The foxes lie
Content in company
I awake
