Archaeologists, well really everyone, are well aware of the fast-paced evolution of technology which drives previous technology to become obsolete. This has become an increasing problem with data being lost, trapped on old forms of technology like floppy disks. Also, if a technology doesn’t become obsolete, the computers and hard drives the information is stored on degrades and becomes unreliable in only a few decades at most. This becomes problematic when previously-collected archaeological assemblages are lost for future researchers and descendent communities. But what if we were able to utilize a storage medium for archaeological data that will never become obsolete? While the future is impossible to guarantee, we may be closer than we know.
What I’m referring to is deoxyribonucleic acid, commonly known as DNA. It already stores all the biological information of living organisms. DNA is made of four organic bases; Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C), and Thymine (T). A codon is the combination of three bases (ex. GCA) and instructs cells to create each of the proteins in our bodies. However, this code system can be used for other things too. With 64 possible codons, alphabets and codes are able to be translated into codons as long as the coder and decoder are using the same key. In fact, in 1999 scientists in New York did exactly this, substituting each possible codon for a letter, number, or grammar symbol. By sequencing the strand of DNA, they were able to perfectly decode their secret message after sending it to themselves through the mail. This signalled the rise of DNA cryptography.
However, this doesn’t end with science-enthusiastic spies. By translating the 1’s and 0’s of binary code from the digital archaeological data into DNA codons, data could be translated and stored within synthetic DNA. This method has been proven by UK scientists in 2012 who successfully coded and decoded all 154 Shakespeare sonnets. Following this achievement, Microsoft and the University of Washington encoded 200 megabytes of data, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all in strands of DNA. The theoretical storage capacity of DNA is endless, as synthetic DNA strands can be as long as required. With the half-life of DNA being 500 years, the possibility of data storage is greatly increased. Storing DNA in a cold dark environment enables the possibility of DNA to be preserved for hundreds of thousands of years as well. The oldest human DNA ever sequenced was about 430,000 years old from Spain and the DNA of an extinct ape dating 1.9 million years old from China has even been successfully sequenced. Scientists have also been able to sequence synthetic DNA within a bacterium that allows reproduction for at least 100 generations with zero original data loss incurred. With life sciences and biology continuing to advance and receive funding, it is possible this technology will expand to every market, enabling archaeologists to explore this new form of digital data storage. As long as biological organisms exist, so will DNA.
My next post will explore some ethical considerations that must accompany this technology if it is introduced to archaeological practice.
- Lauren
1 comment:
Hey Lauren,
This is a great post that captures both the innovative world of digital technologies, mashed up with "but what are the issues?" I know you will talk about that more in a later post, so I won't raise ethics issues here, but as a first post, you made me think of a range of things, so I will natter on a bit here!
For me, I do wonder about the pragmatics of data preservation. While I think we can quickly argee what "vital" data for humanity needs long term preservation (whether it is Shakespeare's sonnets or not!), it does strike me that DNA sequencing requires continuing: expertise; advanced technologies to sequence and later translate; and a willingness to make the effort to preserve. While we can sequence and preserve on synthetic DNA foundational texts, vital records of medicine, engineering, and so on, that only will be preserved hundreds of years form now if we still can recover that data.
More pragmatically, do you have a sense of how universal this could become? I do wonder whether this will be where we save our favourite TikTok videos, photos of our last vacation, or, more importantly, the billions of emails, texts, and other "born digital" means of communication that have become how we formally and individually communicate and make consequential decisions. That is the stuff of human history, and the ongoing loss of this data has had huge consequences, such as the loss of government records detailing policy and administrative decisions (see: https://www.historyassociates.com/preventing-data-loss), or NASA losing most of its images taken in the 1970s from the Viking trip to Mars (see: www.historyassociates.com/preventing-data-loss/).
As those posts imply, when we think about how much, in the moment, actions we take with digital data we often don’t realize we’ve done something to cause that data to be lost until it is. This loss affects every facet of life, I think, not just archaeology. Some good examples of less data loss and more the limited viability of digital data has been flagged in consequential legal cases, for example (See: blog.pagefreezer.com/legal-lessons-learned-5-times-digital-evidence-was-denied-in-court). We could note that recent advances in information management around digital currencies and its logic structure known as Blockchain have been touted as a possible solution… though not without critics; See: blog.dshr.org/2018/09/blockchain-solves-preservation.html.
As I suspect we’ll explore in our class on digital data and curation, preservation begins with very file formats and software we use to make digital content, and especially when we make those decisions on things like in the moment economics and convenience (i.e., something cheap and handy), as individuals, or as academic institutions, corporations, or governments, we will be losing a great deal of knowledge, and record, amassed since the 1960s. Of course, whether or how much of that is “vital” information is open to debate!
Neal
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