Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and iHeart radio and I love all
Speaker 1: things tech, and it is time for another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. The episode you are about to hear
Speaker 1: originally published way back on October two thousand and twelve.
Speaker 1: It is called how d n A Computers Work and
Speaker 1: Chris and I dive into the weird, wild world of
Speaker 1: computers based on DNA. Hope you guys enjoy. We were
Speaker 1: going to share some twisted logic with you today. Yes,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about dioxy ribonucleic acid computers, DONA,
Speaker 1: DONA no nonda, do NAA d n A computers And
Speaker 1: what is a DNA computer? What would it be? Because
Speaker 1: we're really in the very early stages of using DNA
Speaker 1: for the reasons of uh purposes of a computer. But
Speaker 1: what would a DNA computer be? Why would we even
Speaker 1: use DNA? And what the heck is this DNA stuff? Anyway? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a USB port in the back
Speaker 1: of my head, so yeah, he also woke up one
Speaker 1: day and he was in a giant battery and he
Speaker 1: had to get out. Turns out Chris is the one.
Speaker 1: And I'm definitely not we got this. You know, We've
Speaker 1: got agents Smith showing up every other day at the
Speaker 1: office and we're like, he's not here, today's teleworking and
Speaker 1: us is irritating. But anyways, a glitch in the matrix DNA.
Speaker 1: So DNA is is is important stuff. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a molecule that contains information that you know, collectively,
Speaker 1: this information makes makes organisms what they are, yes and
Speaker 1: uh and so biologically DNA is used to store information
Speaker 1: and that is really the key there, you know, saying,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, if DNA stores information for organisms, could
Speaker 1: we use DNA to store information for other purposes. But
Speaker 1: to to really explain this, DNA, it's this, it's it's
Speaker 1: that double helix molecule you're pricing, uh, you know, illustrations
Speaker 1: of it. You may have built a model of it.
Speaker 1: If you are in school, you may be studying this
Speaker 1: so much that the terms I'm going to use you're thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: he's really glossing over this. But it's because this is
Speaker 1: tech stuff, not stuff to blow your mind. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to go too deep into the cellular biology
Speaker 1: aspect of DNA. Yes, And if you're looking for your
Speaker 1: mind being blown, I'm sorry you've come to the wrong place.
Speaker 1: Right now. DNA has a has a lot of instructions
Speaker 1: in it. Yes, As it turns out, it's a very
Speaker 1: tiny molecule with with a very large capacity for for
Speaker 1: carrying information. Yeah, if you were to actually stretch out
Speaker 1: a DNA molecule and lay it lengthwise, it would end
Speaker 1: up taking much more space than it typically does because
Speaker 1: it has this twisted three dimensional uh uh structure. Hence
Speaker 1: my earlier dumb joke. Right, So this twisted structure actually
Speaker 1: allows this this very dense uh storage medium to exist
Speaker 1: in a relatively small volume of space. Yeah, because you've
Speaker 1: twisted it. And you know, it's the whole thing about
Speaker 1: uh conserving surface area and all that great stuff that
Speaker 1: all my biologist friends go on and on and on
Speaker 1: about and then I end up wandering away. Um. But
Speaker 1: DNA has, among many other attributes, there are pairs of
Speaker 1: bases that that pair up in DNA, and this is
Speaker 1: you know, the the structure of those the sequence of
Speaker 1: those determines what information is stored in that strand of DNA. Okay,
Speaker 1: so those four bases you have ad anine, citazine, guanine,
Speaker 1: and thym ing and usually we just call those A, C,
Speaker 1: G and T. And the way that those are sequenced,
Speaker 1: like I said, within a strand of DNA, determines the
Speaker 1: type of information that that DNA holds. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's that that forms the basis of the
Speaker 1: idea of using a DNA computer because in our of course,
Speaker 1: in our our classic computer model, we've got computers thinking
Speaker 1: quote unquote thinking in binary right, zeros and ones and
Speaker 1: so uh. With using DNA. Uh, the approach now is
Speaker 1: to associate certain of those bases with zeros and the
Speaker 1: others with ones, and the idea being that way you
Speaker 1: could sequence a DNA down the length of a strand
Speaker 1: of DNA with these zeros and ones. You encode a
Speaker 1: strand of DNA that way, and then you would decode it.
Speaker 1: You would read back those those base pairings and that
Speaker 1: would determine whether each pair was a zero or a one,
Speaker 1: and then you would decode that into binary language, and
Speaker 1: thus you would get back to whatever information you originally
Speaker 1: stored onto the DNA. UM. This is it makes it
Speaker 1: sound pretty simple. But this is high tech science stuff
Speaker 1: right now. Now, granted it's high tech science stuff that
Speaker 1: we have made huge advances in over the last two decades. Really,
Speaker 1: So things that were seen as practically a possible two
Speaker 1: decades ago are things that we do almost not quite routinely,
Speaker 1: but with a greater ease than we could have expected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but over the course of of the last few decades. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that when people see the
Speaker 1: double helix, it's familiar. Um, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's high tech science, but it's in our public consciousness too,
Speaker 1: it's in our DNA. There you go the fact that
Speaker 1: that that's a a uh slang term, you know for something.
Speaker 1: When you say it's, it's basically you're saying it's deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in your personality or whatever you're saying that about. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's certainly something that that we're all
Speaker 1: familiar with now, but only a few decades ago, you know,
Speaker 1: it was completely foreign to us. Yeah. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: we'll do a quick, quick rundown of the history of
Speaker 1: our knowledge about DNA, because clearly DNA has existed for
Speaker 1: millions of years, but we've only really been aware of
Speaker 1: it sense about well, we knew something about it back
Speaker 1: in eighteen yes when Freedrich Meischer, who was thank you
Speaker 1: was he was a biologist from Switzerland and he was
Speaker 1: looking at something pretty darn gross. He was looking at
Speaker 1: bandages that had puss on them, and he isolated DNA
Speaker 1: from the pus on the bandages, and he thought that
Speaker 1: perhaps the this stuff, these nucleic acids, which is DNA
Speaker 1: is a nucleic acid. He thought that perhaps this stuff
Speaker 1: might contain information in it that would determine why stuff
Speaker 1: is the way it is so, genetic information. He thought
Speaker 1: that that probably did contain that information, but there was
Speaker 1: no way for him to be able to confirm it.
Speaker 1: He could not point to anything and say see, I'm right.
Speaker 1: So that had to wait for future scientists to uh,
Speaker 1: to really dive into it. Not not the past that
Speaker 1: bi gross, but to really dive into the information and
Speaker 1: study it and and figure out more details. So in
Speaker 1: ninete some scientists at Rockefeller University, including Oswald Avery, showed
Speaker 1: that DNA taken from a bacterium could make a non
Speaker 1: infectious type of bacteria become infectious bacteria. So The thought
Speaker 1: was that there must be some information from this nucleic
Speaker 1: acid taken from one type of bacteria that could transfer
Speaker 1: properties to a different bacteria that otherwise would not have
Speaker 1: that infectious property. But what does it r Yes, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what everyone was saying. Well, there's some sort
Speaker 1: of information holding material here. We don't really in ud
Speaker 1: stand the mechanism by which it stores information, nor how
Speaker 1: does it impart that information uh or or replicated. We
Speaker 1: didn't know that at the time. Uh. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase showed that
Speaker 1: to make new viruses bacteria fage virus injected DNA into
Speaker 1: the host cell, which was important because previously it was
Speaker 1: thought that perhaps it was through protein exchange, but instead
Speaker 1: of protein exchange, it was DNA exchange. So that showed, yes,
Speaker 1: there's something in this. This d N A is what
Speaker 1: is important. And then came along Watson and Crick. Yes,
Speaker 1: James D. Watson and Francis Crick. Yeah. They it was
Speaker 1: clear that, uh, that people were already onto something. Hershey
Speaker 1: and Chase had something there, and it was only a
Speaker 1: year later when Watson and Crick, uh you know, made
Speaker 1: their announcement they had discovered the structure of DNA, right,
Speaker 1: and so this is when we started to really learn
Speaker 1: what how DNA you know, forms, and what shape it
Speaker 1: takes and why that's important. And um So once all
Speaker 1: of that was taken, once we learned all that, we
Speaker 1: began to see that these base pairings I was talking about,
Speaker 1: we learned that they pair in very specific ways. You know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned there are the four different bases. There's A,
Speaker 1: the A, C, G T. Well, half of those A
Speaker 1: and G are called purines. Uh, C and T are
Speaker 1: uh perimidines. I'm glad you took that part. Yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: Uh you know, way back when I was actually really
Speaker 1: good at biology. But man, that was a few decades ago.
Speaker 1: So anyway, uh puriings and peri perim pyrimidines. Look, I
Speaker 1: can't even do it now, periods of paramidines. Still, glad
Speaker 1: you took that bond together. Right, So, uh, you don't
Speaker 1: get two puringes bonding together, and you don't get two
Speaker 1: pyramidines bonding together. And to be even more specific, A
Speaker 1: and T will bond together and C and G will
Speaker 1: bond together. All right, so that that means that you know,
Speaker 1: you can't. You're not going to get a strand of
Speaker 1: DNA where A and C or A and G are
Speaker 1: paired together. It does not happen, right they Structurally that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. So uh. That also dictates the rationale behind
Speaker 1: using uh these pairings as zeros and ones, because you
Speaker 1: can either have uh. You can either have the A
Speaker 1: T pairing or the C G pairing, right, so that
Speaker 1: that lets you say, okay, well that's binary. It's either
Speaker 1: you you just designate that one means one, pairing means zero,
Speaker 1: the other pairing means one. Um. If it weren't that case,
Speaker 1: if we could have multiple pairing multiple uh uh, like
Speaker 1: like if A could pair with G instead of just
Speaker 1: A and T, then you would say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: now we've got a system that goes beyond binary, which,
Speaker 1: in theory, if you completely change the way computers work,
Speaker 1: would mean that you could dramatically increase parallel processing because
Speaker 1: you could designate things. It would almost be like the
Speaker 1: cubits of a quantum computer, where you know the basic
Speaker 1: explanation as a cubit represents both a zero and a
Speaker 1: one and all values in between in superposition of one another,
Speaker 1: and that if you have enough cubits, you can perform
Speaker 1: a massive parallel processing problem all at the same time
Speaker 1: because those that that one group of cubits is behaving
Speaker 1: as if it's uh, you know, a huge number of
Speaker 1: traditional bits. I think it's important to remember too that
Speaker 1: no matter how many bases DNA has, they all belong
Speaker 1: to us. Oh I knew it. I knew it. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I's gonna do an all your base
Speaker 1: I belonged to us if someone set us up the bomb,
Speaker 1: so well, it could be Actually, if you if you
Speaker 1: were trying to if those pairs become corrupted, they will
Speaker 1: not work and uh and a cell can die. Actually,
Speaker 1: we're getting a lot of this information to from our
Speaker 1: our excellent article on how stuff Works dot com about
Speaker 1: how DNA works. It gets into a whole lot more detailed, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about and and it's
Speaker 1: very accessible. It's a very accessible article. So if you're
Speaker 1: curious about you know, you've always heard about d N A,
Speaker 1: and you've heard about DNA testing, and you know about
Speaker 1: chromosomes and genes, but you're not really you know, beyond that,
Speaker 1: you're kind of confused. I highly recommend you read how
Speaker 1: DNA works at how stuff works dot com. We also
Speaker 1: have an article on how DNA computers work, which is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting because it's talking about an earlier era of
Speaker 1: DNA computers, but recent developments have really brought it brought
Speaker 1: to lights some interesting, uh, new technologies and new use
Speaker 1: cases for d n A and we'll get into those
Speaker 1: in a second. Yeah, It's it's funny that you say that,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure that people this is futuristic enough where
Speaker 1: people are saying, what are you talking about new developments?
Speaker 1: We haven't heard of a d n A computer before?
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's not really surprising. This is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing like like quantum computing, where they've been
Speaker 1: working on it for some time, but it's not at
Speaker 1: a point where they can really, you know, put something
Speaker 1: on a shelf and go look at this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where people really take notice of it. In general, this
Speaker 1: is all stuff that's taking place in universities and research facilities,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, most of these machines that are
Speaker 1: being made now or or these implementations of using DNA
Speaker 1: for information digital information are are really in the prototype stage.
Speaker 1: But we're getting the technology that allows us to create
Speaker 1: these machines is becoming more and more sophisticated and less expensive,
Speaker 1: which of course is key huge any news. And Gordon
Speaker 1: Moore explained that back and when he did his his
Speaker 1: paper about cramming more components onto an integrated circuit. His
Speaker 1: point was not just that technology was advancing to a
Speaker 1: point where we could shrink stuff down and fit twice
Speaker 1: as many components onto a square inch of silicon as
Speaker 1: we could a year ago. It was also that the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process was becoming efficient enough and cheap enough where
Speaker 1: that made sense. So same sort of thing here. Well,
Speaker 1: all right, so we've we've determined that DNA contains information.
Speaker 1: It because of its very structure, it can contain a
Speaker 1: lot of information in a small volume. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: it wasn't until about nine and I remember it was
Speaker 1: the it was the fifties, the early fifties when we
Speaker 1: started to really understand what DNA was and how how
Speaker 1: it formed and how and its structured and everything like that.
Speaker 1: Into a man named Leonard Edelman came up with this idea.
Speaker 1: He sort of uh introduced the idea of using DNA
Speaker 1: to solve math problems. And it was essentially this idea
Speaker 1: of coding DNA as if it were a strip of
Speaker 1: binary code. And so he took this idea and he
Speaker 1: sort of ran with it. He began to formulate an
Speaker 1: idea about how to how to create an experiment that
Speaker 1: could show that this would work. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: it's talking about a DNA computer, but if you read
Speaker 1: about the experiment, it sounds more like someone in a
Speaker 1: chemistry lab mixing various chemical compositions together and then coming
Speaker 1: up with a solution at the end of it. And
Speaker 1: that's it turns out that this is a computational solution,
Speaker 1: not just a chemical solution. I see what you did there,
Speaker 1: Ye little word play there. Yeah, it's a little a
Speaker 1: little incredible. So he yeah, he um, he dissolved my objections.
Speaker 1: Chris and I have more to say about DNA in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Let me read I'll read the
Speaker 1: steps from our article on DNA computers, because I want
Speaker 1: to explain how this early, early, early implementation of a
Speaker 1: DNA computer, how it how it played out, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing. All right. Here are the steps. Number
Speaker 1: one strands of DNA represent the seven cities now when
Speaker 1: it says seven cities in here, what he was doing
Speaker 1: was he was trying to solve something called the traveling
Speaker 1: salesman problem, also the directed Hamilton's path problem. The idea
Speaker 1: being that you're supposed to find the shortest route between
Speaker 1: a group of cities and and it could be any
Speaker 1: number really of cities, but you have to only go
Speaker 1: through each city one time, um, and it becomes more complex.
Speaker 1: This is this is why this is such a fascinating
Speaker 1: problem uh as Jonathan pointed out to me right before,
Speaker 1: he reminded me that this is something that quantum computing
Speaker 1: is fascinated with because this is such a I don't
Speaker 1: know what you call it, thorny, a thorny problem. So
Speaker 1: it was that problem that they were were that he
Speaker 1: wanted to work on, and he chose, I believe seven cities,
Speaker 1: he said, that is his benchmark he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And see, this is this is an interesting problem for
Speaker 1: uh in computers because think about it, you've got seven cities,
Speaker 1: you can only travel through each city once. You have
Speaker 1: to find the most efficient pathway to go. Well, the
Speaker 1: way a computer would do this, generally speaking, is to
Speaker 1: start going through every single possible um permutation of that
Speaker 1: trip going from city to city and determining which of
Speaker 1: those is the most efficient by the end of it,
Speaker 1: by comparing them all, which can take ages and as
Speaker 1: as of course, as you add more cities, as you
Speaker 1: add complexity to the problem, it creates an exponentially more
Speaker 1: difficult problem for the computer to solve. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that unlike trying to crack a password. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the in the you know, other references we've made
Speaker 1: to these again, parallel processing. That's another reason why quantum
Speaker 1: computers are very scary for anyone who's in cryptography who
Speaker 1: wants to create good encryption, because they're talking about using
Speaker 1: parallel processing to attack, you know, do a brute force
Speaker 1: attack on a password. You can really reduce the amount
Speaker 1: of time it would take you to crack a password,
Speaker 1: like a password that would probably take you thousands of
Speaker 1: years in classic computer time might only take an hour
Speaker 1: in using a quantum computer because it's using that parallel approach.
Speaker 1: So just remember, quantum computing is the cure for the
Speaker 1: common code. Man, what is it with you today? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Chris is in a move anyway? All right,
Speaker 1: Getting back to getting back to this thing, this set
Speaker 1: of steps. All right, So Edelman creates strands of DNA
Speaker 1: that represent the seven cities. Uh and so it's these A, T,
Speaker 1: and CG pairings and then um, these various sequences represent
Speaker 1: each city and possible flight path. He then took the
Speaker 1: molecules that these strands of DNA and mixed them in
Speaker 1: a test tube, and some of the strands of DNA
Speaker 1: stuck together in a chain. Of those strands represented a
Speaker 1: potential answer to that question, which of these you know,
Speaker 1: which route is the most efficient. Within a few seconds,
Speaker 1: all of the possible combinations of DNA strands were created
Speaker 1: in the test tube, and then Adelman eliminated the wrong
Speaker 1: molecules through chemical reactions, which left behind only the flight
Speaker 1: paths that connect all seven cities. So here he was
Speaker 1: doing chemistry and looking at molecules by uh and it
Speaker 1: was and it was biological chemistry because he was using
Speaker 1: organic DNA um and and trying to come up with
Speaker 1: the answer that way, which is pretty interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks that sounds so different from the
Speaker 1: way we think of computing today, where you're using microprocessors
Speaker 1: and you know, the user interface looking at screen this
Speaker 1: guy is using test tubes and molecules um and he
Speaker 1: was actually thinking at the time that this would be
Speaker 1: DNA computing is going to be the future because it
Speaker 1: packs so much information in such a small form factor
Speaker 1: and it's plentiful. Yes, because there's a lot of life
Speaker 1: out there, and organic life relies on DNA heavily. There's
Speaker 1: some that rely on RNA, but we're not going to
Speaker 1: go into that. But anyway, a great amount of organic
Speaker 1: life out there has lots and lots of DNA, so
Speaker 1: the we've got plenty of materials to work from. Uh.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that since that time where his first
Speaker 1: experiments were showing the viability of a DNA computer, our
Speaker 1: ability to sequence synthetic DNA has improved to the point
Speaker 1: where organic DNA is not really what we care about anymore.
Speaker 1: We can synthesize DNA in the lab and just make
Speaker 1: it ourselves so we don't have to um harvest it.
Speaker 1: As Chris was saying in the pre show, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be a totally different world if you realize
Speaker 1: that your computer was running out a memory, so you
Speaker 1: checked another hamster into your machine so that you could
Speaker 1: finish whatever it was you were doing. That was a
Speaker 1: particularly gory idea. Well we didn't know, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: left out the part about the grinding noises, you know,
Speaker 1: and for flying out the back you yeah, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was my contribution. Um, yeah, they University of Rochester,
Speaker 1: there were some researchers at found ways to use DNA
Speaker 1: to create logic gates. Again in the it looks like
Speaker 1: um so uh and that's we've touched on on several occasions,
Speaker 1: but that those logic gates are basically key to classic computing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what uh, this is. This is what allows
Speaker 1: the computer to dictate how information moves through it so
Speaker 1: that it has any meaning. You know. The logic gates
Speaker 1: essentially dictate whether the zero or one that goes into
Speaker 1: the gate comes out at zero or one on the
Speaker 1: other side or something. Usually it's a pair. If it's
Speaker 1: a zero and a one on the other side of
Speaker 1: the gate, is that going to be a one or zero?
Speaker 1: And it all depends on the type of gate it is. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course you you can link a bunch of
Speaker 1: gates together to create all sorts of different outcomes depending
Speaker 1: upon what the input is. This is all very important
Speaker 1: from classical computing. So getting to that step of being
Speaker 1: able to build logic gates out of d in a
Speaker 1: it was pivotal if you want to be able to
Speaker 1: eventually build a true DNA computer. And again this is
Speaker 1: you know, you compare the components of a DNA computer
Speaker 1: to those of a an inorganic computer. UM. And we have,
Speaker 1: as a Jonathan pointed out and Gordon Moore's uh famous
Speaker 1: prediction that the transistors would double in number per square
Speaker 1: inch of silicon back in the original prediction, UM, you
Speaker 1: know every you know over a certain period of time,
Speaker 1: which again has changed, you know, year, year and a half,
Speaker 1: two years. The thing is, um, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: flat piece of silicon. And we've also talked about how
Speaker 1: hard drives, the classical hard drive, UM, you know has
Speaker 1: so much information on it. It's in a it's in
Speaker 1: a flat plane. We've talked about electronic memory and how
Speaker 1: you know this information is is getting stored. But we
Speaker 1: basically been talking two dimensional and and a long time
Speaker 1: ago we talked about processors and how at some point,
Speaker 1: due to the limitations of physics like it's at some
Speaker 1: point electrons will begin to tunnel through layers of the
Speaker 1: material used to create transistors, basically making them ineffective. So
Speaker 1: at some point, theoretically the traditional transistor chip is going
Speaker 1: to be so full that you cannot fill it anymore
Speaker 1: without having serious electrical problems. So they were talking about
Speaker 1: going into three D processors. Well, d N a kind
Speaker 1: of goes around that problem or is a natural if
Speaker 1: you will solution. Hey, for once, that wasn't a pun
Speaker 1: intended um, because DNA is volumetric. It isn't it can
Speaker 1: fit because of its its natural characteristics. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be in a two dimensional flat shape. You don't
Speaker 1: have to stretch out the helix and stick it on
Speaker 1: a piece of silicon or whatever to make it work. Um,
Speaker 1: and that gives uh, that gives computing so much more
Speaker 1: advantage to move to a DNA based existence, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the challenge is building The challenge is building the
Speaker 1: equipment that allows you to sequence and decode that information
Speaker 1: because you know that's where where that's where the bottleneck is.
Speaker 1: Right now, is that the it's not simple, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have to get there. Yeah, But once we get to
Speaker 1: a point where we're able to construct the DNA and
Speaker 1: lay it out in such a way where we're able
Speaker 1: to pack in all that information, and then we have
Speaker 1: the companion devices that can decode that and make it
Speaker 1: meaningful to a computer. Again, then you're talking about some
Speaker 1: huge leaps in storage capacity. One gram of d n
Speaker 1: A can store up to four hundred and fifty five
Speaker 1: billion gigabytes of data, which is about a hundred billion
Speaker 1: DVDs worth of information. Yea, yea. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: this is the article that sort of uh turned me
Speaker 1: onto this idea was something that my friends Kim and
Speaker 1: Tim pointed out to me in the in the Guardian,
Speaker 1: which really wasn't that long ago August two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: They started talking about how books had been encoded in
Speaker 1: dna UM and that that got me to thinking and
Speaker 1: to suggesting this to Jonathan as a potential topic because
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating that d n A, something so small,
Speaker 1: can hold that much information. Yeah, and it's funny because
Speaker 1: the story goes it talks about how Professor George Church
Speaker 1: lead this project and he belongs to he well, he teaches,
Speaker 1: he teaches at HAVD, but not just Harvard, it's Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School. This is this is one of those weird things,
Speaker 1: uh that this this overlaps science, computer science, and uh medicine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've got I'm sorry, physical science and medical science.
Speaker 1: Let's say that right. No, No, that's that's fine. That's
Speaker 1: a computer science and and medical science. It's it's multidisciplinary obviously,
Speaker 1: just like nanobiology or nanotechnology is a multidisciplinary approach. So
Speaker 1: is this DNA computer or DNA storage idea. We've got
Speaker 1: a little bit more about DNA ahead of us, and
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: So what what Professor Church did was they decided to
Speaker 1: take a book that was about five point to seven
Speaker 1: megabits of digital space once you converted into digital information,
Speaker 1: and to uh encode that as d N A and UM.
Speaker 1: They didn't do it just once. They decided to duplicate
Speaker 1: it a few times, seven seventy billion times, seventy billion
Speaker 1: copies of this book, which, according to an article in
Speaker 1: Extreme Tech, prompted them to joke that it made it
Speaker 1: the best selling book of all time, yes, and that
Speaker 1: it was. The seventy billion copies totaled about forty four
Speaker 1: peta bytes of data. UM. So that is slightly larger
Speaker 1: than the N A S I have attached at my
Speaker 1: network at home. Yeah, yeah, forty four pea bites. That's
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of information. It's also quite a bit
Speaker 1: smaller than my n A s Yeah. So so when
Speaker 1: you think about it, the the promise of d n
Speaker 1: A is that with a relatively small amount of DNA
Speaker 1: you could store the sum total of all human knowledge
Speaker 1: in a very tiny compartment, relatively speaking, a tiny compartment.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you're able to use that same sort
Speaker 1: of uh of capacity in a processing way as opposed
Speaker 1: to just storage storage is great. I mean, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: The the the this project was really showing how using
Speaker 1: DNA is great for archival purposes if you want to
Speaker 1: store information for longevity's sake. And another point about that
Speaker 1: is that this yeah, is that here's here's an issue
Speaker 1: that we have with storing information. The way we access
Speaker 1: information changes over time, and some of the there there
Speaker 1: are multiple problems here. Sometimes the way we store information, uh,
Speaker 1: we store it on a medium that can decompose, which
Speaker 1: means it as time passes, the likelihood that that data
Speaker 1: is intact decreases. So let's say like a book. Okay,
Speaker 1: books are susceptible to lots of different environmental factors that
Speaker 1: can make them impossible to read. So as time goes by,
Speaker 1: a book's ability to preserve the information decreases, particularly depending
Speaker 1: upon its environment. Yeah. And and one of the things
Speaker 1: that's funny to me about this is, and I'll keep
Speaker 1: this short, but it's it's funny to me that in
Speaker 1: a way, Uh, the increase in technology, um has only
Speaker 1: increased the rate of data rot as some people call it.
Speaker 1: Because you think about something like the Rosetta stone and
Speaker 1: how long ago that was chiseled, but it's still there
Speaker 1: because hey, you know it's stone. If now, if you
Speaker 1: left it out in the elements, eventually the the writing
Speaker 1: on it will wear away due to the effects of erosion.
Speaker 1: But um, that's longer lived than say, paper, which could
Speaker 1: be eaten by weevils or could be affected by mold
Speaker 1: or mildew or or even water or fire. Um. You
Speaker 1: know there there are many things acid in the paper. Um.
Speaker 1: But but that would be longer lived than say, um,
Speaker 1: a magnetic storage medium, which might may only live a
Speaker 1: few decades. Yeah, because you've got with magnetic storage, eventually
Speaker 1: that magnetic properties starts to kind of and I have
Speaker 1: Dad gets corrupted. Yeah, and I've had CDs and DVDs
Speaker 1: that I've burned and a few years ago that are
Speaker 1: starting to show signs of deterioration. And I'm thinking all
Speaker 1: this futuristic stuff, it's kind of funny. The stuff that's
Speaker 1: chiseled in stone is still there well. And on top
Speaker 1: of all that, besides the fact that you've got these media,
Speaker 1: these media that will that can degrade over time. Um,
Speaker 1: magnetic definitely is more susceptible that I would say than
Speaker 1: optical storage. But but both can can degree and both
Speaker 1: are susceptible to damage. I mean, just about everything is.
Speaker 1: But but the other problem is that we move away
Speaker 1: from those older forms of media and eventually we get
Speaker 1: to a point where nothing we have can read what
Speaker 1: we used to use, or if you do have something
Speaker 1: that can read it, it's a legacy system. So like
Speaker 1: the keeping old computers around simply to read those documents, right,
Speaker 1: like like anything that's on an old five and a
Speaker 1: quarter inch diskette from the early days of the personal computer,
Speaker 1: you know, and I still have something, I would wager
Speaker 1: that most people do not have easy access to such
Speaker 1: a disk drive. Um, you know, especially if you're just
Speaker 1: kind of an average user and you've gone out and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I want a new laptop. You go again.
Speaker 1: If you buy a new laptop today, you might not
Speaker 1: even have an optical drive, which means that there you
Speaker 1: could come across records of information that you have no
Speaker 1: way of accessing because you do not have the tech
Speaker 1: capable of accessing it. Well, d n A is a
Speaker 1: basic building block of organic life, and so the idea
Speaker 1: is that because it's something so basic, we will always
Speaker 1: have the ability and assuming that you know, we don't
Speaker 1: have some sort of post apocalyptic event, while an apocalyptic
Speaker 1: event that then leads to post apocalyptic events, um, then
Speaker 1: we should be able to have equipment that can read
Speaker 1: this same information. Hey, do you have the instructions on
Speaker 1: how to read DNA? Yeah? I saved it on that
Speaker 1: magnetic wa now here in Atlanta. Were used to post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic events because we've got zombies. Yes, you may have
Speaker 1: seen if you've watched the documentary The Walking Dead as
Speaker 1: seen on TV. So, um, yeah, the the idea was
Speaker 1: that this will d n A does not degrade over time. Well,
Speaker 1: it takes a much longer time than something like a
Speaker 1: paper book. Right, So since you're not worried about degrading.
Speaker 1: I mean when I say it doesn't degrade over time,
Speaker 1: we're talking generations here, the undreds of thousands of years
Speaker 1: so people. So yes, I wouldn't know eventually it will degrade,
Speaker 1: but for the foreseeable future it won't. Uh. It takes
Speaker 1: up far less space. We don't have to worry so
Speaker 1: much about not being able to access the information anymore
Speaker 1: because against the basic building block, we will presumably be
Speaker 1: still be interested in DNA in the future. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: it become increasingly interested as we learn more about how
Speaker 1: to uh to tweet DNA to do things like fight
Speaker 1: off illnesses and other scientific applications of that knowledge. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of the whole point was that it's
Speaker 1: great for archival and that reason it's gonna be. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a more permanent solution in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's really where the focus is on the
Speaker 1: recent articles that we've been reading, although there's still obviously
Speaker 1: quite a bit of development on the research and about
Speaker 1: building a true DNA computer that would have of an
Speaker 1: incredibly small form factor. I mean, you're talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: DNA being the size of a couple of atoms, and
Speaker 1: this is some small stuff. I mean, we could theoretically
Speaker 1: have a DNA computer capable of performing huge calculations and
Speaker 1: storing an enormous amount of data in a tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: form factor. It would be amazing if we could look
Speaker 1: into the future, maybe I don't know, twenty fifty years
Speaker 1: something like that, where perhaps we have reached the point
Speaker 1: where this technology is viable and reproducible and economic, where
Speaker 1: we could see it in applications that actually the average
Speaker 1: consumer could access. It wouldn't just be the realm of
Speaker 1: the scientific community or the research community. It would also
Speaker 1: be within our grasp. Because then can you imagine you
Speaker 1: can have a smartphone that could literally contain all the
Speaker 1: data that we have ever generated ever since the dawn
Speaker 1: of man on your phone. I was waiting for you
Speaker 1: to go all the data. No, that was it, just
Speaker 1: all of all the data, um well, all the data
Speaker 1: we have access to. Um there there. It's astounding to
Speaker 1: think of something uh so common that has been with
Speaker 1: us for so long being an answer and fairly easy
Speaker 1: answer to a lot of these problems. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's not easy to get there, but the
Speaker 1: idea is like really just DNA. As it turns out.
Speaker 1: You know, they've they've been using synthetic DNA to run
Speaker 1: these experiments, and there are some drawbacks, one of which
Speaker 1: is it can't be rewritten. That is true. So once
Speaker 1: you write that data, it's that's another reason why people
Speaker 1: are talking about for archival purposes. Once you write the data,
Speaker 1: that's it. Now. Granted, you're talking about a construct that's
Speaker 1: so small that you could keep doing that indefinitely and
Speaker 1: not have to worry about taking up too much space.
Speaker 1: But that's just the way they're thinking of it right now. Right.
Speaker 1: But but you know you can't. You can't always think
Speaker 1: that way because someday that will catch up to you.
Speaker 1: Apparently that might be when we're actually saying, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: we finally got a plan on how to get off
Speaker 1: this rock because the Sun's gonna swallow us up in
Speaker 1: another million years. That that would never happen. By the way,
Speaker 1: don't don't write into me and explain to me why
Speaker 1: that would be ridiculous. I understand. I was just using
Speaker 1: that as a an example. Well, and and the other
Speaker 1: thing is, um, you know, and yes, I realized that
Speaker 1: this is you know that you could destroy DNA, but um,
Speaker 1: thinking about that the sensitive information can't be erased. Then
Speaker 1: you would need to keep up with your Let's say
Speaker 1: you had a DNA drive like you have a flash
Speaker 1: drive to carry back and forth with you, uh, and
Speaker 1: it gets lost and it had I don't know importance
Speaker 1: and sitive documents related to national security or um you know,
Speaker 1: the secret um uh copy of your unpublished book, and
Speaker 1: somebody else runs across it and makes billions of dollars
Speaker 1: off of it because they found it. You can't you
Speaker 1: can't remotely wipe that information. I don't know how you
Speaker 1: would do that without destroying without physically destroying the material.
Speaker 1: So it's that's sort of a a minor drawback, really,
Speaker 1: but it's something it's it's something very different from the
Speaker 1: media that we typically talk about. So clearly in that case,
Speaker 1: you would be talking about, all right, well, now we've
Speaker 1: got this incredible archival ability. Now we have to figure
Speaker 1: out a way of securing it. Oh well, don't see that. Well,
Speaker 1: and this brings me to my brilliant science fiction idea
Speaker 1: which I I said in the pre show. I said,
Speaker 1: if if someone steals this, I will find you. See.
Speaker 1: That was my That was my like shout out to
Speaker 1: your no, no, I'm sharing it because if someone out
Speaker 1: there makes the us, I want to cut. So here's
Speaker 1: the sci fi idea. Guys. You have a character who
Speaker 1: is just an ordinary guy or girl, you know, someone
Speaker 1: who is going through life and they've got the same
Speaker 1: sort of challenges and problems and joys and despairs as
Speaker 1: all the rest of us. But then suddenly they noticed
Speaker 1: that they're being watched and people are closing in on them,
Speaker 1: and they don't know why because they're just a normal person,
Speaker 1: and so they're trying to get away, and it turns
Speaker 1: out they find out that they themselves are a synthetic
Speaker 1: life form. They were built in a lab from the
Speaker 1: ground up, and in fact, their DNA contains this incredibly
Speaker 1: important information encoded into this person's very being is a
Speaker 1: secret message of such import that various forces are closing
Speaker 1: in on them, determined to get hold of this person,
Speaker 1: lop off a finger and figure out what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on, And so the character has to go
Speaker 1: through this incredible series of adventures in order to figure out.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a journey of self discovery as well
Speaker 1: as protection, and there's a whole like hero arc and
Speaker 1: the credits are great and Bruce Willis Stars and I
Speaker 1: want to cut I've got data under my skin, are
Speaker 1: in it and through it. So, guys, yeah that was
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone's gonna write in and say, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a great story when so and so wrote it
Speaker 1: years ago. I want to read it. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I have no illusions that someone has not already come
Speaker 1: up with that idea. But if they haven't, and then
Speaker 1: you guys think that's a great idea and you want
Speaker 1: to go out and make it. Remember, I want to
Speaker 1: credit and some money or at least a sandwich. Come on,
Speaker 1: writer's gotta eat all right, assassinating stuff though, it's it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I would never have thought
Speaker 1: to do, so, I mean, I'm blown away by that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty fascinating subject. And like we said,
Speaker 1: there's that we have some great articles on how stuff.
Speaker 1: We actually can go and check those out and read
Speaker 1: up on DNA and DNA computers and you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, they are the articles on the Guardian as
Speaker 1: well as other places that are talking about this storage
Speaker 1: medium and it blows my mind. Hey, guys, hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff Always a joy
Speaker 1: to revisit the old episodes we did in the past.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting that I decided to throw this one
Speaker 1: in there, because obviously a lot has happened since two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, so I may have to do a full
Speaker 1: update episode about d n A computers in the near future.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in hearing such a thing, let me know.
Speaker 1: The email address for the show is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or jump on over to
Speaker 1: the website that's text stuff podcast dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: you're gonna find an archive to all of our previous episodes,
Speaker 1: as well as our presence on social media, and you
Speaker 1: also find a link to our online store, where every
Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show and we
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
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