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How likely is it than storing arbitrary data in a bacteria's DNA would allow it to create something dangerous for humans?
Approximately like the chance that DNA sequence of a virus, when executed as shell code, will infect your machine.
I gloriously await from teenage hackers 10 years from now release CRISPR viruses/worms that insert GIF meme pranks into the human population germ line, eventually triggering the apocalypse. It seems our ability to mess stuff up is growing faster than our ability to defend against bugs. I shudder to think what happens when sloppy engineering practices or "WannaCry" meet biology. Hey, we've encrypted your germ line, an…
edit: putting the bank in blood bank
Earlier quoted context omitted.
they store the data in the dna, they encode pixels using ATGC, and re-sequence. But they only have one population of bacteria that contain all of the same data.
I don't know much about how DNA works, but by inserting ATGC sequences, does that not mess up the bacteria's replication process or something? How would the cell 'read' this encoded gif in the DNA? Would it try to build a protein because of it, or would it ignore the sequence? Do cells usually have a checksum-type of functionality to detect if their DNA is valid/unmutated? The article itself didn't make any mention,…
Most likely this is just "junk" DNA that has no physical manifestation.
As for reading the picture, it is only seen when they extract the DNA and use methods of sequencing to produce the image, meaning it will only show the little gif when analyzed the way it was designed for.
How likely is it than storing arbitrary data in a bacteria's DNA would allow it to create something dangerous for humans?
Approximately like the chance that DNA sequence of a virus, when executed as shell code, will infect your machine.
It doesn't have to be the whole code that's dangerous, what about a section of it?
That still makes it very improbable, but orders of magnitude more than the whole sequence.
I gloriously await from teenage hackers 10 years from now release CRISPR viruses/worms that insert GIF meme pranks into the human population germ line, eventually triggering the apocalypse. It seems our ability to mess stuff up is growing faster than our ability to defend against bugs. I shudder to think what happens when sloppy engineering practices or "WannaCry" meet biology. Hey, we've encrypted your germ line, an…
I'd say "myself included", but my gender transition will take care of that. Hmm... I wonder if a future version of CRISPR could get my body to produce its own estrogen.