The reason I ask is that it seems subsequences of DNA are enough to generate proteins, or other molecules. (am I right? if not anyone who knows biology please correct me)
It doesn't have to be the whole code that's dangerous, what about a section of it?
That still makes it very improbable, but orders of magnitude more than the whole sequence.
The encoding used by these sorts of projects avoids 'ATG' (start site), and possibly the Shine-Dalgarno Sequence (where ribosomes attach), if they do it right. The bacterial DNA can mutate, but the likelihood of that mutation creating a viable protein, let alone a dangerous one, is very low.
Honestly, since these stored data aren't coding, the chances of them surviving for long, even in a population of bacteria, is low. Bacteria tend to favor smaller genomes, with higher percentage of coding DNA.
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The reason I ask is that it seems subsequences of DNA are enough to generate proteins, or other molecules. (am I right? if not anyone who knows biology please correct me)
It doesn't have to be the whole code that's dangerous, what about a section of it?
That still makes it very improbable, but orders of magnitude more than the whole sequence.
The encoding used by these sorts of projects avoids 'ATG' (start site), and possibly the Shine-Dalgarno Sequence (where ribosomes attach), if they do it right. The bacterial DNA can mutate, but the likelihood of that mutation creating a viable protein, let alone a dangerous one, is very low. Honestly, since these stored data aren't coding, the chances of them surviving for long, even in a population of bacteria, is low. Bacteria tend to favor smaller genomes, with higher percentage of coding DNA.