From TheAge.com.au: Researchers tinker with bacteria to store data.

These days, data get stored on disks, computer chips, hard drives and good old-fashioned paper. Scientists in Japan see something far smaller but more durable — bacteria.

The four characters — T, C, A and G — that represent the genetic coding in DNA work much like digital data.

Character combinations can stand for specific letters and symbols — so codes in genomes can be translated, or read, to produce music, text, video and other content.

While ink may fade and computers may crash, bacterial information lasts as long as a species stays alive — possibly a mind-boggling million years – according to Professor Masaru Tomita, who heads the team of researchers at Keio University. [continue]