A DNA sequence is not alive in any sense. Over the last decade, as they developed these techniques, scientists also used DNA as an attention-getting device. Since a natural DNA sequence often contains genetic material inserted by an infection, they also encoded a harmless computer virus into their DNA storage unit. “It is a joke.”It took their computer two or three minutes to turn all that into a DNA sequence. The advancement in DNA storage can’t come soon enough.

Source: Wall Street Journal March 02, 2017 19:01 UTC