[jkimmel]

There's no reason storing information in a population of DNA molecules is fundamentally unstable.

Yes, mutations occur. Randomly. This means that if you sequence a set of DNA molecules the consensus sequence can still render the proper data string despite flaws in each individual copy.

In the context of generating organisms like this, so long as your stored information is not in a loci that could be mutated to regulate proliferation in a positive way, mutations in your storage string wouldn't propagate in a consensus manner (in some organisms, it's hard to make them grow faster. E. coli for instance have already been optimized to divide pretty darn quickly by evolution).

The same is true for populations of DNA molecules rather than organisms (are any organisms much more than DNA storage and maintenance machines :-D?). Random mutations in one molecule in a tube would be different for each neighboring molecule, but the consensus sequence is still valid.

This all makes perfect intuitive sense when you recognize that even some DNA sequences with no positive effect on growth are fairly well conserved on evolutionary timescales. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Long_terminal_repeat https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Alu_element

[dekhn]

My criticism has nothing to do with the reliability of the storage mechanism.