I\'ve recently read a couple articles dealing with long term data storage, and D

Question

I've recently read a couple articles dealing with long term data storage, and DNA was suggested as one of the prime candidates for long term storage of digital data additionally, there is this article which deals with decoding of long storage data. These popular articles, though simple do mention important concepts- how packets are stored in DNA use addressing schemes, redundancy of storage, writing for a recipient who may be using a different language, etc.

This made me think - we have the SETI initiative which is looking for signs of (intelligent) life in the universe. That organization was created long time ago, and uses technologies of those days - radio waves. The modern science knows that we can store a lot of data in DNA, and that most organism DNA contains only a small fraction of protein coding sequences and a large amount of non-coding material. If I understand correctly, some of the non coding material is repetitive and highly preserved. Has anyone considered expanding the search for intelligent life to include examination of DNA for messages that might've been left by other intelligent species actually visiting earth?

Explanation / Answer

Let's extend your idea a bit... Ok, there are conserved sequences that we may not know what their function is. Let's assume that they are indeed not functional and are some kind of message left by an ancient form of intelligence.

How would you go about detecting that? It is already given that they are highly non-random, but this is not surprising and many "non-message" sequences have this property. Also consider that these sequences are quite short, meaning that they will have low information content. This means that if you check enough conversion codes and use imagination, you would probably be able to find several "messages" which are "hidden" there (e.g. "bible codes" etc). In other words, as I am a scientist that deals with probability and pattern recognition frequently, you will have a very hard time trying to convince me that you found a real hidden message... Formally, you don't have a satisfying background model.

The main difference from SETI is that there they know that their background is essentially random noise, so it is much easier to detect "intelligent" messages.

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