This new breakthrough -- when combined with the DNA-based data storage and a method to transmit DNA between cells the school's already working on -- means that Stanford has created all the necessary components of a biologic computer.
Hal Rosen, a manager of research at Hitachi, says he's impressed by the researchers' ability to shrink so much storage into such a small space, but skeptical that a self-assembling method could create larger-scale disks.