Once upon a time, the Wikipedia article about Hacking provided the following as sort of “canonical” example of hacking: using an optical mouse as barcode scanner. In some ways, this incredible paper feels like an iteration of that example.
A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
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Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#12[flagged]
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#13Anyone else think that there is already primitive image data encoded in biological data? Essentially basic shapes and patterns which are passed down semi-generationally.
I think it would have very high energy requirements. For this trait to survive over generations there would need to be a tremendous evolutionary benefit. What would that be for a “primitive image data”?
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#14[flagged]
[flagged]
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#15Just so we're clear, this is ONE pixel per, I don't know, 10000 cells or so. So one bit per DNA chain, with that bit repeated thousands of times to get redundancy. Still and incredible achievement.
The super neat thing is that they tag each DNA chain with the pixel coordinates, so you can afterwards mix those 10,000 DNA strands each for all 96 pixels into one 1-mio-DNA-strand-soup and still recover the image successfully.
>successfully
Except when it recombines weirdly and gets mixed up as per the article.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
The super neat thing is that they tag each DNA chain with the pixel coordinates, so you can afterwards mix those 10,000 DNA strands each for all 96 pixels into one 1-mio-DNA-strand-soup and still recover the image successfully.
>successfully Except when it recombines weirdly and gets mixed up as per the article.
Those are just mutations in the image
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#17Anyone else think that there is already primitive image data encoded in biological data? Essentially basic shapes and patterns which are passed down semi-generationally.
I guess it's possible if this conferred some survival advantage.
It can be useful to work from the evidence to a conclusion instead of the other way round.
But wondering and philosophising can be fun :]
It would be cool if humans could pass knowledge via their offspring. But I always get worried thinking if I'm the asshole, I wouldn't want my kid to be one too.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#18Anyone else think that there is already primitive image data encoded in biological data? Essentially basic shapes and patterns which are passed down semi-generationally.
Anton Petrov has a recent video on YouTube I never watched it yet but it's title is "Could Life Be Transmitted Via Radio Waves? Information Panspermia". Just a bit of fun I'm sure Anton isn't too wild he puts out some interesting videos but not in a way to push quackery.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#19Anyone else think that there is already primitive image data encoded in biological data? Essentially basic shapes and patterns which are passed down semi-generationally.
I think it would have very high energy requirements. For this trait to survive over generations there would need to be a tremendous evolutionary benefit. What would that be for a “primitive image data”?
Maybe things like "long green shape" (cats' fear of cucumbers because they resemble snakes), or "a series of black and yellow stripes", or even "a black blob with many appendages" to watch out for spiders? Encoding some primitive image data so that further generations know what to avoid or pursue seems like a very tremendous evolutionary benefit.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#20Exploit idea: create an image, which, when taken a shot of, would be written to DNA as a virus.
(I know viruses are RNA)