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LIMIT OF SILICON STORAGE NEAR. "A 3.5-inch floppy disk could store a measly 1.44 megabytes of data –" "not even enough to fit a single mp3 music file. Today, a small one gigabyte (1,000 megabytes) USB flash drive can store about 200 songs. It is possible to store one terrabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) on a single USB stick, enough for 2,000 hours of music. Flash memory USB sticks of this size are already on the market." But the limits of storage are being approached. " " http://lnkd.in/dN6qj6i View in LinkedIn

DNA HARD DRIVE. ""In 2011 we had 1.8 times 10 to the 21 bytes of information stored. By 2020 it will be 50 times that. That's an astounding number; and doesn't include a much larger set of data that's thrown away. At theoretical maximum, one gram of single stranded genetic code can encode 455 exabytes of information. That's 4.9 times 10 to the 11 GB. (the latest iPad (has) 64 GB of storage space.). DNA ... is often readable even after being exposed to unfavorable conditions for thousands of years."" " http://lnkd.in/dk76wna View in LinkedIn

DNA BUILDING BLOCKS. "DNA nanostructures as building blocks for research & future medical therapeutics." Hot topic lecture. " " http://lnkd.in/dZpApBc View in LinkedIn

FUTURE BRICKS AND MORTAR. "DNA will become the building material of the future." (George Church). This important predictive statement bears unwrapping. " " http://lnkd.in/d5SRnBf View in LinkedIn

LONGEST MOLECULE IN UNIVERSE. "DNA is one of the longest molecules in the natural world. You possess enough DNA, stretched out in a line, to reach from here to the sun and back more than 300 times. Yet each cell nucleus must contain two metres of DNA, so it has to be very flexible. It coils - much like a telephone cord - into tight complex structures called chromatins without corrupting the vital information within."" " http://lnkd.in/dWuV7t5 View in LinkedIn

CHURCH BETS ON STEM CELLS (iPS). "This is where I’m putting almost all of my chips these days, because it combines many of my interests–genomics, sequencing, epigenetics, synthetic biology, stem cells. I don’t think people have fully appreciated how quickly adult stem cells and sequencing and synthetic biology have progressed. They have progressed by orders of magnitude since we got IPS. Before that, they basically weren’t working."" " http://lnkd.in/dWBcA_p View in LinkedIn

CHURCH'S FOCUS TODAY. "When I asked Church what he was most excited about right now, he answered without hesitation: “I’m thinking a lot about using regeneration as the key to treatments and keeping people healthy.”" " http://lnkd.in/dWBcA_p View in LinkedIn

RESURRECTION OF 1918 FLU, a lethal pandemic which killed the equivalent of the current UK population, and three times the number killed in WWI. "Scientists in the US say they have recreated the influenza virus that killed at least 50 million people in 1918, and they have infected mice with it." They reconstructed it from DNA in hospital samples and from a victim in Alaskan permafrost. Critical insights to bird flu were obtained. " " http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8103-us-scientists-resurrect-deadly-1918-flu.html View in LinkedIn

100 MILLION YEAR INSERTS IN HUMAN GENES by extinct retroviruses have been described. These are equally accessible to resurrection by demonstrated laboratory methods. " " http://lnkd.in/d2-NRF4 View in LinkedIn

RESURRECTION OF ANCIENT EXTINCT HUMAN RETROVIRUSES. "The genomes of most organisms are infested with repeat sequences derived from genomic parasites. In humans, repeat elements constitute ∼45% of the total genome. About 8% of these are contributed by the class of elements that replicate via an RNA intermediate including HERVS." These Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERVs) have been successfully resurrected from extinction in the lab. " " http://lnkd.in/d-MgDBw View in LinkedIn