#Genes could be answer to saving out dearly beloved #data - http://clapway.com/2015/08/18/to-preserve-digital-data-dna-will-be-the-save-button-of-the-future-323/

Researchers believe we will soon be able to use DNA to encapsulate our most precious digital data, meaning that the building blocks of our bodies may soon be the very thing that will become the hard drives of the future.

The Challenge of Preserving Digital Data

Digital data has become so prevalent in our lives, it is almost hard to remember the times when we didn’t require usernames and passwords to access our memories, our friends, and our social lives. However, with the added convenience of modern technology has come a very real problem in the relatively short shelf-life of these very devices that we rely on to store all our information.

This week, a team of researchers presented their work of using DNA in digital data at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The novel research has been able to alleviate the issues of longevity in regards to modern technologies, like the hard drive, which always inevitably fails (especially when we need it the most, it seems).

Robert Grass and the researchers at ETH Zurich have been able to store and translate digital data using DNA, touting a remarkable preservation life of over 2,000 years for the data their transferred.

For some of us, we wouldn’t mind losing digital data from our past (I’m looking at you, Myspace and old Xanga blogs from middle school); much of the information we do save that may be necessary in the future can really benefit from this new technology.

How ETH Zurich Will Evolutionize the Save Button for Digital Data in the Future

Grass and the other researchers from ETH Zurich noticed a major flaw in how we save our digital data. Our hard drives wear out and not in hundreds of years, but just a few decades. Meanwhile, archaeologists are unearthing books written hundreds, if not thousands of years ago with perfectly preserved information.

DNA is getting a lot of buzz in the press

The researchers realized that the key to preserving the old relics was in the DNA. It proved a worthy technology as it used a four code sequence (remember biology class when you learned A-T-C-G bases in DNA?) whereas our computer systems use a similar structure called binary, which is comprised of 0’s and 1’s to encode data. But more than that, DNA had two major factors.

The first factor is the extremely small size of DNA, which is definitely needed if all the information in this digital age is going to be stored for thousands of years. Think of the average external hard drive, which is similar in size to John Green’s latest paperback book. That one hard drive can only store approximately 5 terabytes of information. In comparison, DNA can store over 300,000 terabytes, in only a fraction of an ounce of DNA.

While size does matter in this context, durability is the second factor and probably just as important to ensure the safe encoding and storage of digital data. That external hard drive you have may last about 50 years, but DNA has been able to be analyzed from thousands of years ago. What’s more is that the ancient DNA from archaeology and paleontology digs proves that this same DNA can still be sequenced thousands of years later.

Digital Data Technology May Use DNA-Based Hard Drives

Grass’ researchers have already encoded DNA with text from the Swiss Federal Charter and the Method of Archimedes, which comes out to be around 83 kilobytes of information.

Their findings revealed that after encapsulating the DNA, warming it to 160-degrees Fahrenheit for a week to replicate the conditions of 2,000 years passing by, they were still able to decode the information without any errors. Since that was a success, they are moving on to the next issue with DNA preservation of digital data: a filing system. Rather than having to decode the entire strand of DNA, the researchers want to be able to pinpoint the specific location of one file.

Digital DNA Storage Too Expensive? Maybe This Is A Better Option For You

Though the project has ensured the technology is available, whether or not it is within your price range will vary. With just a few megabytes of digital data encoding and storing costing upwards over thousands of dollars, unless you’re part of the elite upper class, the “old-fashioned” save button may be your only option for now.

Title Picture Credit to Steve Jurvetson
Additional Image Credit to Wonderlane

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You’ll love Nanoform for protecting your data:

To Preserve Digital Data, DNA Will be The Save Button of the Future

What this Romanian jawbone can tell us about our evolutionary ancestors. - http://clapway.com/2015/06/23/interspecies-breeding-ancient-dna-proves-early-europeans-more-closely-related-to-neanderthal-ancestors-556/

Early Europeans were more closely related to their Neanderthal ancestors say geneticists after analyzing ancient DNA from a 40,000 year old human jawbone. The jawbone found in Romania in 2002 has provided the first genetic evidence of modern humans interbreeding with Neanderthals in Europe.

Homo sapiens and our Neanderthal Ancestors, Homo neanderthalensis

About 45,000 years ago and before then, Europe’s only human population was Homo neanderthalensis. But within only 10,000 years, the Neanderthal population had become extinct, replaced by Homo sapiens, or modern humans who had started to spread across the continent. Before being completely wiped out, our Neanderthal ancestors contributed to our genome. With the exception of sub-Saharan descendants, on average at least one to three percent of the modern human genome comes from Neanderthals.

The transition between species happened rather quickly in evolutionary terms. But what caused the dramatic shift?

Researchers have long known the two species interacted with each other as archaeological evidence has been found. During the time period that modern humans and Neanderthals were neighbors in Europe, there were cultural exchanges between the two groups as seen in subtle changes in tool-making, burial rituals and even in body decoration habits. However, those studies have lacked one important clue in the evolutionary game during that period: skeletons.

The Discovery of the Jawbone, the Link Between Modern Humans and Neanderthals

When archaeologists unearthed a jawbone in a Romanian cave in 2002, they were puzzled as to its origins. Besides a second skull found near the jawbone in Oase Cave, there was no evidence of other artifacts to indicate who the individuals were or to what culture they belonged. The physical features also presented a challenge to the anthropologists. Many of the features were clearly those of modern humans, but some definitively Neanderthal traits were also present. The anthropologists theorized that the two individuals must have been descendants of both groups.

An international group of geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School’s David Reich of Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, conducted a new study to determine the jawbone’s human origins.

How a Single Jawbone Gave Away Our Neanderthal Ancestors’ Biggest Secret

Pääbo and Reich’s team set about a difficult quest to obtain the jawbone’s ancient DNA. Not only had it been sitting in soil filled with microbes for over 40,000 years, but since being found in 2002, it had over a decade of handling to be contaminated with several sets of modern human DNA.

Qiaomei Fu, then a graduate student, applied modern methods Pääbo’s lab had pioneered to retrieve the DNA via genetic probes. These methods spanned the DNA against 3.7 million human genome positions to evaluate the variations between human populations. Fu was able to separate the ancient DNA from its contaminants by restricting her analysis to DNA with a specific type of damage which resulted from deterioration that had occurred over thousands of years.

The DNA analysis revealed rather than the normal Neanderthal contribution of one to three percent in the genome, an astonishing six to nine percent of the jawbone’s genome came from Neanderthals.

Interbreeding with Our Neanderthal Ancestors

The new study suggests that the jawbone is evidence of modern humans interbreeding with Neanderthals more recently than previously postulated. As DNA passes from each generation, each segment is broken and recombined. With each generation, the DNA of all the other ancestors is interspersed. Reich’s team found segments of intact Neanderthal DNA that was large enough to indicate that the DNA hadn’t been passed down for more than four to six generations.

“In the last few years, we’ve documented interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans,” Reich says, “but we never thought we’d be so lucky to find someone so close to that event.”

Amazingly, the study has also proven the Oase cave individuals don’t have any living relatives in Romania or anywhere else for that matter. The team believes instead of passing on his ancestry, the individuals were part of a group that had, like the Neanderthals, disappeared after the modern humans took over.

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Looking far back at our ancestors, look how far we’ve come with MUSIO:

Interspecies Breeding: Ancient DNA Proves Early Europeans More Closely Related to Neanderthal Ancestors