Wild and wacky, redux

Technology is a fascinating thing, as some recent articles remind me.

DNA does the splits

Case in point: "Bioengineers Make DNA Into a Living Flash Drive." That's handy when you want to provide on-board storage to your biotech products. More than compact memory stands between us and nanobots -- but memory is one of the challenges. Alas, there's a bit of scaling up to be done ... as the prototype encodes only a single bit.

Still in a medical-nanotech vein (yes, pun intended), "Nanoparticle Completely Eradicates Hepatitis C Virus." If a nanoparticle can be designed for that virus, why not others? I'm game for a cure for the common cold.

Still thinking small, "Transistor Made Using a Single Atom May Help Beat Moore’s Law." Like the living flash memory, this was only a proof of concept, alas.

But if you want lots of nanoscale data, consider that "World's Largest Dataset on Human Genetic Variation Goes Public."

The 1000 Genome Project represents a lot of data -- and yet, each of us humans is defined by a mere 23K genes. That number is dwarfed -- by orders of magnitude -- by our many tiny passengers. See "Gut bacteria gene complement dwarfs human genome."

And in keeping with today's theme ... this will be a tiny post :-)