From left, Luis Ceze, one of the designers of the new DNA storage system; Douglas Carmean, a designer of computers at Microsoft; and Karin Strauss, a Microsoft computer architect, at the University of Washington in Seattle. David Ryder for The New York Times
SEATTLE — Computer data has been depicted as microscopic magnetic smudges, electric charges and even Lilliputian patterns of dots that reflect laser beams. It may ultimately move into the fabric of life itself — encoded in the organic molecules that are strung together like pearls to form strands of DNA.
