Shakespeare sonnets stored on DNA strands

Published on 24/01/2013 00:25

A GENETIC storage device has been used to “download” all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets on to strands of synthetic DNA.

Scientists were then able to decode the information and reproduce the words of the Bard with complete accuracy.

The landmark study paves the way to storing huge amounts of data using the same method evolved by nature to write the “Book of Life”.

Theoretically, 100 million hours of high definition video could be stored in a cupful of DNA, said Dr Nick Goldman, of the European Bioinformatics Institute at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge.