BACKING UP DATA . . . TO A GERBIL????:  Yep, that’s right.  Scientists have discovered a way to store data, any type of data, in DNA.  As Wired reporter Lore Sjöberg puts it:

The ability to store data in DNA molecules is an important breakthrough, not because of the reasons given, but because it allows you to back your data up to a gerbil. Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want to say, “I’ve got my presentation right here, in this gerbil”? Who doesn’t want to stride into a FedEx Office place and ask where they keep their gerbil readers?

There are other obvious advantages to gerbil-based data storage. To begin with, having multiple copies of your backed-up data is no problem — just stick another gerbil in there, and boom! Put the data on the Y chromosome and you can be sure that every male gerbil born is a fresh, probably unaltered copy of your data.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to have to clean up poop in order to store or retrieve data.  I’d rather have one of those cute little plastic flash drives that’s shaped like a gerbil.  Much cleaner.