In the latest effort to contend with exploding quantities of digital data, researchers encoded an entire book into the genetic molecules of DNA, the basic building block of life, and then accurately read back the text. 研究人员将一整本书通过编码载入生命基本单元──DNA遗传分子中，然后再行准确无误地借此朗读这本书的文本。这是人类为应付快速增长快速增长的电子数据所采行的近期行动。

The experiment, reported Thursday in the journal Science, may point a way toward eventual data-storage devices with vastly more capacity for their size than todays computer chips and drives. 《科学》(Science)杂志周四报导了这一实验。该实验可能会为人类研发近超强当前电脑芯片和磁盘容量的数据存储设备指明方向。

A device the size of your thumb could store as much information as the whole Internet, said Harvard University molecular geneticist George Church, the projects senior researcher. 该项目的高级研究员、哈佛大学(Harvard University)分子遗传学家丘奇(George Church)说道，拇指大小的一个设备就可以存储整个互联网上的所有信息。In their work, the group translated the English text of a coming book on genomic engineering into actual DNA. 这个团队将一本将要出版发行的有关基因工程的英文书编译成了确实的DNA。

DNA contains genetic instructions written in a simple but powerful code made up of four chemicals called bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). DNA所含用一种非常简单却无比强劲的编码写的遗传指令，这些指令由腺嘌呤(A)、鸟嘌呤(G)、胞嘧啶(C)和胸腺嘧啶(T)四种被称作硷基的化学物质构成。The Harvard researchers started with the digital version of the book, which is composed of the ones and zeros that computers read. Next, on paper, they translated the zeros into either the A or C of the DNA base pairs, and changed the ones into either the G or T. 哈佛大学的研究人员首先就是指这本书的电子版应从，这个版本由计算机不会“读书”的1和0构成。

接下来，他们再行把电子版还原成到纸上，将0翻译成DNA硷基对中的A或C，将1译为称之为G或T。Then, using now-standard laboratory techniques, they created short strands of actual DNA that held the coded sequence-almost 55,000 strands in all. Each strand contained a portion of the text and an address that indicated where it occurred in the flow of the book. 然后，他们利用如今标准的实验室技术，建构出有包括编码序列的现实DNA短链，一共约有5.5万个短链。每条较短链都所含这本书本文内容的一部分，还有一个指出它在这本书中方位的地址。

In that form-a viscous liquid or solid salt-a billion copies of the book could fit easily into a test tube and, under normal conditions, last for centuries, the researchers said. 这些研究人员说道，这本书即使有10亿份拷贝，也可精彩以这种形式(粘性液体或液体盐)放在一个试管中，并且在长时间情况下可留存数百年时间。The technique likely is a long way from being commercially viable. But it highlights the potential of DNA as a stable, long-term archive for ordinary information, such as photographs, books, financial records, medical files and videos, all of which today are stored as computer code. 这种技术距商业化应用于有可能还有很长一段距离，但它凸显DNA可平稳、持久地存储普通信息（如照片、书籍、财务记录、医疗档案和视频）的潜力，这些资料目前都以计算机编码的方式存储。

It shows that the vast increase in capacity to synthesize and sequence DNA can be applied to store significant amounts of data, said pioneering synthetic biologist Drew Endy at Stanford University, who wasnt involved in the project. If you wanted to have your library encoded in DNA, you could probably do that now. 斯坦福大学(Stanford University)具备首创型的制备生物学家恩迪(Drew Endy)说道，这指出人类制备和排序DNA的能力大大提高，这个方法可用作存储大量数据，如果你期望把自己的图书馆编译器存储到DNA中，很有可能现在就可以这么做到了。迪恩没参予这个项目。

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