In a paper out this week in Science, researchers Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski report successfully using DNA to store and retrieve “a full computer operating system, movie, and other files”.

DNA has the potential to provide large-capacity information storage. However, current methods have only been able to use a fraction of the theoretical maximum. Erlich and Zielinski present a method, DNA Fountain, which approaches the theoretical maximum for information stored per nucleotide. They demonstrated efficient encoding of information – including a full computer operating system – into DNA that could be retrieved at scale after multiple rounds of polymerase chain reaction.

Which operating system? Turns out it’s KolibriOS, the all-assembler, floppy-based x86 operating system originally based on MenuetOS.