Webfroot copied+pasted this article from ZZZ Online so I thot what the hell I’ll follow their steps since this article is so friggin cool!

To say that most people dislike Cock Roaches would be an understatement to say the least. In fact If I were to ink a dictionary I would probably illustrate the word ‘creepy’ with a picture of a roach, but Jaron Lanier and Lisa Haney and Dr. David Sulzer have much different ideas (it has been called disgustingly brilliant) about the value in the humble (though nasty) scavenger.

What they propose is simple and genius ( although hovering near the mad scientist territory-I personally have always wanted to drill a channel from the pacific ocean to Death valley (it’s below sea level) if I ever get to be a mad scientist- one must have goals). Their idea is to store data directly on the DNA of the roaches.

Everything living (that we know of) contains DNA (deoxyribonucelaicacid – I guarantee I spelled this wrong and I am not about to spell check it -ha). And also in every organism some strands of DNA seem to have no function. These strands are known as introns (kinda like Entron, similar name similar function).

They propose using these introns as kind of a digital storage device by translating the binary digital data (0′s and 1′s) into the four digit quadnary DNA language (A-G-C-T) and then splicing those genes back into the roach.

They propose using every issue of the The NY Times from 1999 (of course you could encode whatever you liked..) and this test data would be passed from mother to daughter (so to speak) thru the DNA. So all you would have to do is to catch a roach and plop a couple of cells into your reader (assuming everyone has digital DNA readers in the future) and it would be able to decode the stored info from the DNA, thus making the roach an archival roach – Roach Rom as it were. Thru a special plan of breeding that ensures the transmission of this data (keeping the dominate genes out there) the group estimates that after fourteen years every roach in New York would be an archival roach.

Amazing but of course I immediately thought of just about every outer limits or Twilight zone I have ever seen, and also that this technique could be used on Humans. Say get a Nano assembler to splice your genes inside your body and you could turn your own dna into your own personal memory device, want to know what I learned all week – just cut off a stand of hair and pop it into the DNA digital reader…