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**NowFloabDow** · 06-26-2007, 10:44 AM

dear friends,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/sc...in&oref=slogin

be well, be love.

david

human dna, the ultimate spot for secret messages (are some there now?)
by dennis overbye

in douglas adams’s science fiction classic, “the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy,” there is a character by the name of slartibartfast, who designed the fjords of norway and left his signature in a glacier.

i was reminded of slartibartfast recently as i was trying to grasp the implications of the feat of a team of japanese geneticists who announced that they had taught relativity to a bacterium, sort of.

using the same code that computer keyboards use, the japanese group, led by masaru tomita of keio university, wrote four copies of albert einstein’s famous formula, e=mc2, along with “1905,” the date that the young einstein derived it, into the bacterium’s genome, the 400-million-long string of a’s, g’s, t’s and c’s that determine everything the little bug is and everything it’s ever going to be.

the point was not to celebrate einstein. the feat, they said in a paper published in the journal biotechnology progress, was a demonstration of dna as the ultimate information storage material, able to withstand floods, terrorism, time and the changing fashions in technology, not to mention the ability to be imprinted with little unobtrusive trademark labels — little “made by monsanto” tags, say.

06-26-2007, 10:44 AM	#1
NowFloabDow Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 447 Senior Member	Human DNA, the Ultimate Spot for Secret Messages (Are Some There Now?) dear friends, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/sc...in&oref=slogin be well, be love. david human dna, the ultimate spot for secret messages (are some there now?) by dennis overbye in douglas adams’s science fiction classic, “the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy,” there is a character by the name of slartibartfast, who designed the fjords of norway and left his signature in a glacier. i was reminded of slartibartfast recently as i was trying to grasp the implications of the feat of a team of japanese geneticists who announced that they had taught relativity to a bacterium, sort of. using the same code that computer keyboards use, the japanese group, led by masaru tomita of keio university, wrote four copies of albert einstein’s famous formula, e=mc2, along with “1905,” the date that the young einstein derived it, into the bacterium’s genome, the 400-million-long string of a’s, g’s, t’s and c’s that determine everything the little bug is and everything it’s ever going to be. the point was not to celebrate einstein. the feat, they said in a paper published in the journal biotechnology progress, was a demonstration of dna as the ultimate information storage material, able to withstand floods, terrorism, time and the changing fashions in technology, not to mention the ability to be imprinted with little unobtrusive trademark labels — little “made by monsanto” tags, say.
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