confined messages

As Voyager was entering interstellar space with a very naive human message for the universe, coronavirus sprouted on earth with a transcendent universal message for humanity. Is there any entanglement?

Thirty years ago Voyager-1 took an iconic collective selfie containing a humbling message. A pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam was twinkling 3.7 billion miles away. The spacecraft transports a time capsule with sounds and images of live beeings; it also treasures a golden record imagined by Carl Sagan, informing that there is intelligent life here and now.

In 2003, WHO identified SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus risk and NASA announced Voyager-1 was abandoning the heliosphere although it was finally confirmed in 2013. That very year, Jennifer Doudna y Emmanuelle Charpentier were taking off towards the Nobel Prize publishing ‘*Rewriting a Genome*’.

Voyager-2 entered interstellar space last year with our voices. Synchronically, coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerged on earth invoking all humanity with a message from nature that all of us need to decipher glocally. Both store about 32k long information elements; the space vessels in electronic 16bit and 18bit words; the biological capsules, in RNA molecules with 12 to 17 atom nitrogenous bases. Even though Voyager spacecraft are afar on their journey towards space inmensity, their instrument´s data reaches us faithfully. We are well connected emotional and physically, marveling with the infinite and the infinitesimal. Joining the nanoscopic DNA molecules of a single human been, we could build an astronomically long molecule reaching each Voyager and back to earth.

Commemorating 2020, several companies just created time capsules with sounds, images and data of the whole year. First time in history, these digital messages have been confined on DNA molecules to last thousands or millions of years. Reading and writing bits of information on atoms of biological molecules is a new exponential technology. The new DNA Data Storage Alliance, lead by Illumina, Microsoft and Twist, means to accelerate this; soon we will be able to store eternally, unlimited information in microscopic volumes, for free.

Many people will celebrate the end of this year locked down. Political decisions prioritize biophysical safety; however, it would be important to care for mental, emotional and social health as well. In the digital age, collective intelligence should be able to transparently manage and disruptively transform our education, justice and health systems. It is essential to respect everyone’s rights and freedom, looking after our planet and the many dimensions of individual and community health. The pandemic confirms that regional public health systems should be integrated globally while healthcare systems should locally guarantee safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable, compassionate, and human centered care. It is urgent to prioritize health prevention and promotion, emphasizing the importance of nutrition, environment and social justice.

In the International Year of the Nurse, United Nations proclaimed December 27 as the *International Day of Epidemics Preparedness*. This date also signals a historical event: european citizens are beginning to get vaccines embodying a biological message for their cells to make innocuous parts of the virus to train their immune systems. On this day we celebrate the birthday of a father of modern microbiology, Louis Pasteur; from now on, we will also remember each year that despite all advise, we were not ready to prevent nor effectively face COVID-19. In 2020, public health systems and markets failed healthcare systems in urgent needed to accelerate their transformation

Programming live cells to store or transform information, energy and matter, is a new humanity superpower implying great responsibility. Synthetic biology is emerging with the convergency of biology, engineering and data science, creating abundance of oportunities to solve humanity problems; bioinnovation and bioentrepreneurship for the common good, and fair wealth distribution, are possible with cooperating ethical people empowered with STEAM capabilities. Confined within this acronym, there is a message full of hope: AMETS means DREAM in our Basque language.