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Students in Hong Kong found a way to securely and reliably store information using bacteria
ComputerWorld Blogs, Darlene Storm, Jan 18, 2011
Students at Hong Kong's Chinese University may be onto a type of memory media that could be a truly secure way to store data -- text, images, music, and video. It takes up almost no space, can be encrypted, and is so gross that it's unlikely many people would attempt to steal it. That is, if the thief would even consider searching a refrigerator for massive data storage inside E. Coli -- the bacteria responsible for 90% of urinary tract infections, which can cause food poisoning and is the reason for many food recalls. The bacteria can successfully and securely be used for biostorage, the storage of data in living things.
... Student researchers spent 10 months developing the project from scratch, reported their professor Chan King-ming. The team of 11 students from the Biochemistry program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong were the 2010 gold medalist in MIT's International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. The students describe their bioencryption project as turning fantasy into reality and even coined a new term of biocryptography. These students report having high expectations for the future of a biocomputer; "we believe this could be an industrial standard in handling large scale data storage in living cells."
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