Can an individual’s own DNA be digitized? If so, could you keep it forever without it degrading? Could you do tests on the digital version alone without needing the physical material?

Question

Sometimes forensic investigators bemoan the lack of “sufficient” DNA for testing.

Isn’t an individual’s entire genome embedded in each cell? So theoretically as long as you have a single cell of DNA and digitize it, that should be sufficient?

In: 1

Answer 1

Examining DNA isn’t just going at it with a really big microscope and writing down what you see. It’s less like a book you can scan into a computer and more like a really fragile scroll that disintegrates shortly after opening. You can read a little bit at the place of your choosing, but to read anything elsewhere, you need a different copy.

Forensic analysis of DNA only focuses on a tiny fraction of the genome. It’s enough to identify a person but by no means exhaustive, like a fingerprint. And even for this, you need lots and lots of DNA to generate each “marker”