The DNA Bank Network [1] indexes DNA samples held by several DNA banks — there are more banks not indexed by this system.

There are 224 different mammals so far, but no rhinos.

For plants, the Millennium Seed Bank [2] is collecting and storing seeds with the aim to have all species. They have 13% of plant species so far.

[1] http://www.dnabank-network.org/

[2] http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/collections/millenni... (my previous employer; they're recruiting for Linux analysts at the moment).

I'm not a biologist either. I think the problem is that DNA breaks down when stored. And you cannot store it digitally, because the way the molecules are folded contains information as well (besides just the base-pair letters ACTG), and we can't sequence the folding yet. But like I said, IANAB.

While DNA samples would be a great thing to have, I'd hate for that to be the only trance of them left in the future. Imagine one day, when all we will have is a huge book of DNA samples of everything we used to know.

The people taking DNA samples agree with you. It's not like they just really want a sample of rhino DNA. They're keeping them so that maybe some day we'll be able to use that sample to bring back actual rhinos.

Is it relevant to your question? http://gizmodo.com/the-isolated-vault-that-could-store-our-d...