Scientists on Reddit

George Church

Geneticist at Harvard and MIT

u/George-Church ↗AMA only
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The 2016 r/science AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 1 post and 30 comments from u/George-Church, dated 2016 to 2022, most often in r/science and r/biotech.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/science

On “Science AMA Series: I’m George Church, professor at Harvard and MIT, founder of PersonalGenomes.org. My lab develops technologies for sequencing genomes, editing DNA in living cells, and harnessing DNA as a molecular tool. AMA!”

Hi Dr. Church! My question is about using DNA as an archival medium. What is the long-term fidelity of storage like? Will information be lost due to mutation or just chemical degradation over time?

u/George-Church replied

The record for DNA persistence is 700,000 years (stored under less than ideal circumstances in a yukon horse). Stored in a dry, anoxic state this could be longer. As with other archival systems, redundancy is key. No energy is required…

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The record for DNA persistence is 700,000 years (stored under less than ideal circumstances in a yukon horse). Stored in a dry, anoxic state this could be longer. As with other archival systems, redundancy is key. No energy is required during storage, the physical format doesn't change, and the size/density is a million times better than other current methods. Although the cost of copying is low (70 billion copies of a book was nothing), the cost of the original copy still needs to come down.

Explains thingsExplaining things to strangersr/science · 2 points as of Nov 2026Full thread ↗