I was reading the news today and they were talking about parts of DNA having the ability to store huge amounts of memory. The technology was way over my head but the gist of it sounds exciting. To anyone familiar with this does this mean it may be possible to program memory into animals and humans at some point instead of just using this material to build computers? They said they used an ink jet printer to install the memory into the part of the DNA.
Was that the article in the New York Times about the Andalusian emigres? I had the same question, because it didn’t cite any scientific evidence at all, yet it was in the Science section.
I think this more along the lines of the OP’s question.
That was the article I read, it strikes me as having huge widespread possiblities.
No, really it doesn’t, as already discussed in this other recent thread on the topic.
To elaborate a little further (which may be necessary, given the huge misconceptions on display in the OP), this is not DNA you could practicably put into a person’s or other organism’s cells, and even if you could (and the organism could survive it), it would have no effect whatsoever on what they would know or could remember. If it were in your cells, you would have access to the information in the professor’s book. It has nothing to do with memory, except in the sense of information storage, as on a CD, a hard drive, or, indeed, in a book. At best it is an impractical alternative to paper.
Thanks, makes more sense, still interesting.
Think of it like paper. If I learn to be an architect and draw a properly formatted blueprint of a house on some paper, a team of constructors can build a house. However, if I write a short story on the paper, the construction workers aren’t going to do a damn thing.
DNA is just a container for information. Unless that information is formatted so that the biological components of our body can understand it, it’s of no use to them.