Movies Stored in Our DNA...We'll Become Our Own Libraries!

Quite the idea:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/...-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

"Honey, what do you want to watch tonight?"
"Don't know. What do you have in you that we haven't seen..?"
C.

 

It's a nice gene manipulation demonstrator, however I don't think it's a practical long term storage method, certainly not in living cells. It's too prone to genetic drift and mutations over generations of the organism's evolution. You'd eventually get too many errors - the longer the message, the more error prone it becomes.

A more stable application would be to use naked DNA, ie, separated from a living cell (or synthesized - this is now possible) and placed into a preserving solution. While this approach would be longer lasting, you'd still have to ensure proper storage, temperature, light levels, etc, so that the sample doesn't degrade. Sounds like too much trouble to be practical.

 

It's still not as clever as peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.