"Researchers Store Data in Bacteria DNA"

FUJISAWA, Japan (AP) - These days, data get stored on disks, computer chips, hard drives and good old-fashioned paper. Scientists in Japan see something far smaller but more durable - bacteria.

The four characters that represent the genetic coding in DNA work much like digital data. Character combinations can stand for specific letters and symbols - so codes in genomes can be translated, or read, to produce music, text, video and other content.

While ink may fade and computers may crash, bacterial information lasts as long as a species stays alive - possibly a mind-boggling million years - according to Professor Masaru Tomita, who heads the team of researchers at Keio University.

Tomita's team successfully inserted into a common bacterium Albert Einstein's famous "E equals MC squared" equation and "1905," the year the Nobel Prize-winning physicist published the special theory of relativity.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20070516/D8P5OK2G0.html

This reminds me of a STTNG episode, where all manner of people in the galaxy had pieces of a message inserted into their DNA and they had to come together to find out what it was.

Wonder if we have any messages in us?

no one else finds this fascinating?