DNA and Biopiracy

Biopiracy involves commercializing and profiting from local knowledge and biological resources, without crediting or compensating those who provided that knowledge or resource. Genetic information can be obtained by many people around the world, as it exists in the natural world around us. Over time, this information has been made available digitally. This has been possible because of countless collective efforts from scientists and indigenous people alike. For example, a company of researchers may be studying certain plant life in a specific area and the people indigenous to that are can provide their knowledge of that plant life. A lot of genetic information is stored in public databases where everyone can have access to them. This gives opportunity for biopiracy to occur and can cause many issues. This article gives insight on this from different perspectives and also discusses different policies that are in place. 

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/nios-ss052115.php

Because it is such a widespread issue I think it will be very hard to control, although in an ideal world I would want everyone to get credit and compensation for their work, not just big companies. Some solutions that are being suggested are having big companies track the origins of the gene or data that they are profiting from and coming up with agreements for compensation and who can use this data to avoid infringing on anyones rights and making the situation more fair. 

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/rise-digital-dna-raises-biopiracy-fears

Is DNA the Storage System of the Future?
   A research team at the University of Washington along with Microsoft have found a solution to our increased amount of digital storage. In today world we store everything digitally including pictures, videos, documents and more. All of these things need to be stored somewhere, so we use hard drives, flash drives, and other large electronic equipment. Eventually we are going to run out of space and need smaller alternatives to the current storage systems. instead of creating a new technology the research team at the University of Washington decided to reconfigure the most basic building block of organisms; which can store more information than anything we have ever created.
      They were able to store images into the DNA by reconfiguring the nucleotide sequence. They converted long strands of ones and zeros into G's, C's, A's, and T's. During their research they found an affective way to convert the digital data which reduces the error when the information is retrieved from the DNA. This method of storage would not only allow us to store more information in a smaller space, but also allow storage to be more permanent. Unlike electronics that are bound to breakdown after years and years of use, DNA can be dehydrated and easily rehydrated when the information is needed.
     The team of researchers believe this storage method is going to be implemented in the near future. The main barrier for this technology is the price. It is still too expensive to synthesize and sequence DNA on the scale that is required to use it as a mode of digital storage. I believe this is the future of digital storage. As technology improves the technique of using DNA to store digital data will become easier and more cost effective; therefore more accessible for society.

Running Out of Hard Drive Space? Use Your DNA.

Running out of space on your hard drive or memory card? Scientists at the University of Washington partnered with Microsoft have discovered a new way of storing electronic information such as pictures or vides, and the method of storage is anything but technological. It is a memory device of a more organic form, DNA. Their successful system allows for the upload, storage and retrieval of digital data using a DNA molecule as the storage device. 

Technological advances are growing everyday and people everywhere are becoming more dependent on technology. The amount of digital data worldwide is expected to hit the trillions within the next five years, so finding a more efficient method of data storage is becoming a crucial issue. DNA can hold data much more efficiently than any technological device. DNA decays at a much lesser rate than any hard drive or memory card, so data can be stored for centuries as opposed to decades. Also DNA can hold an unexpectedly high amount of data, 10,000 gigs to be exact. This large amount of data does not require more than a small amount of DNA for storage, just enough to fill the very bottom of a test tube is plenty to store 10,000 gigs. In this study scientists successfully encoded four photos as nucleotide sequences of synthetic DNA. Once encoded the photos were successfully retrieved in a reverse process from a larger pool of DNA strands. The resulting images were amazingly reconstructed in their entirety, not a single piece was missing. 

This method of data storage seems to be extraordinarily promising, however the scientists do not mention how long data encoding and retrieval takes. As an increasingly impatient species people may be resistant to using this method if storage and retrieval takes days or even just hours to achieve. I am interested to see where the studies on this method go, it seems like a promising method. DNA stores an astonishing amount of genetic information on it, so the thought that I can someday store my thousands of pictures on a DNA molecule is quite intriguing.