George CHURCH et al. :: Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA (2012) . [patent pending, 1.5 mg of DNA could hold 1 petabyte of data] - http://www.sciencemag.org/content...
Done in principle: when Craig Venter and colleagues created the first synthetic cell in 2010, they watermarked their names into its DNA code... "Researchers encoded an entire book into the genetic molecules of DNA, then accurately read back the text. "A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet," said molecular geneticist George Church. In a viscous liquid or solid salt, a billion copies of the book could fit easily into a test tube, and last for centuries under normal conditions. The DNA book wasn't inserted into a living cell but kept in a laboratory container. If incorporated into a living cell, the stored DNA data might be changed or erased by the normal process of cell biology. The Harvard effort stands out for its large scale. It took several days to write the DNA form of the book, and even longer to read it back." http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano
poet Christian Bök on The Xenotext: "It's written in such a way that, when it's translated into this gene sequence, and then implanted, it can cause the organism it's implanted in to produce a viable protein in response -- a protein that is itself a completely different poem. So I'm genetically engineering a bacterium that won't just archive my own text in its DNA, but also becomes a machine for writing a poem in response. It's a very masculine assertion about the aesthetic creation of life. The organism reads the poem, and writes in response a very melancholy, feminine -- almost surreal in tone -- poem about the aesthetic loss of life." http://t.co/AifggLku - Adriano