Stranger than Science Fiction: DNA Storage for Film Clips & Shakespeare’s Sonnets?!

I read through the articles about ice as a medium for storage, the frozen zoos, and other types of “Arks of the Apocalypse” to archive and preserve our planet’s ecological biodiversity for posterity. But it was the New York Times article, “Who Needs Hard Drives? Scientists Store Film Clip in DNA” that struck me as the most intriguing among this week’s selection of readings. Since I had majored in psychology as an undergraduate student and spent a lot of time reading about Rene Descartes and the notion of mind-body dualism in my philosophy classes, I needed to wrap my head around what it meant that we can now use DNA as storage spaces for various types of information after coming across this fairly recent article.

DNA itself is codified organic material made up primarily out of four types of nucleotide protein bases—adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T), and cytocine (C). DNA, our biology, is physical matter, whereas our minds are on the metaphysical cognitive level. From a classical Cartesian mind-body dualism perspective the brain (as an organ in the body) is separate from the mind, which is simultaneously a generator, processor, and repository of information, knowledge, beliefs, desires, and dreams. Mental events are side effects of complex physiological systems becoming activated (e.g. neurons firing to send signals to the rest of the brain when processing external environmental stimuli or reacting to an internal physiological reaction). Mental events (thoughts/feelings/mental images) are not exactly the brain activity itself. So if DNA is part of the physiological structure, how can visual media data containing mental images be encoded into DNA?

CAT scans and MRIs can show us the structural lobe areas of the brain, and EEGs can highlight the neurological activation in process in relation to their location in the brain, but these tests don’t really tell us much about what the person is actually thinking and/or feeling at the moment that these data are captured, unless the person being examined tells the evaluator. You can screen a person to see that they’re probably hungry if their hypothalamus is active, but unless the person explicitly states it, you cannot really know what specific kind of food they might be craving in that exact moment (e.g. a cheeseburger with fries from Wendy’s as opposed to a fruit salad).

So what does all of this mean now when scientists claim that we can now store visual media data, such as clips from a motion picture or snippets of Shakespeare’s sonnets, into strips of DNA as an alternative/new place to store our media archaeology? DNA holds organic information, so how does one translate and transcribe visual media data (e.g. pixels) into codified protein base instructions into bacterial cells for film archival preservation?

It sounds like crazy science fiction, but it amazes me how geneticists and other scientists have come up with ways to execute this idea of storing data in bacterial DNA. I think this could possibly revolutionize heath care industry in terms of accurately monitoring, diagnosing, and treating patients on a longitudinal scale (e.g. cancer patients). As quoted from the article: “The idea is to have bacteria engineered as recording devices drift up to the brain in the blood and take notes for a while. Scientists would then extract the bacteria and examine their DNA to see what they had observed in the brain neurons.”

Sure, “DNA bacterial data storage”—as I’m going to call it (that sounds so odd!)—could be a sustainable organic solution to the problem we have of trying to minimize wasteful media materials (e.g. discarded discs, decayed magnetic tapes, etc.). I can accept and believe Dr. George Church when he asserts that “Storing information in DNA is this side of science fiction.”

However, I’m still left wondering about the ethical implications of all of this in terms of just how we are going to use these methods to address social issues if geneticists expand beyond bacterial DNA and move to human DNA to store media data. While it would be edgy to say at a party that I literally have Shakespeare’s sonnets embedded in my DNA (as opposed to joking that poetry’s in my soul), I have to question what other practical purposes this kind of data codification, storage, and archival preservation would serve in the broader auspices of institutional infrastructures.

What would the government do if they knew I had classified information encoded in my body? Am I a piece of property if I am the only individual (literally) carrying DNA with sensitive secrets (such as the instructions to a medical cure, the whole coding language for digital and analog media files to DNA storage, or the geographical location of a nuclear weapon) on my person? Where would my human rights begin and my ownership of this data end?

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe I’m missing something here and need to do more research on the topic. But what I do know is that truth is stranger than science fiction. It’s epistemologically mind-blowing.

One Reply

  • Excellent, Julianne! I’m really eager to integrate your expertise into our class discussion today! Thanks for raising all these critical ethical questions. I had hoped to discuss ethics broadly — but you’ve beautifully articulated some very particular concerns.

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