Bitnome
DNA has four bases.
Neatly 4=2^2 so all bases can be represented in binary with only two bits.
e.g.
A: 00
T: 01
C: 10
G: 11
In the human genome there are (according to wikipedia) about 3 billion base pairs. If each base is substituted by its binary representation the human genome becomes 6 billion bits long, or 6 gigabits.
There are eight bits to a byte.
So 6 gigabits becomes 750000000 bytes or 0.75 gigabytes.
The human genome is 0.75GB
My hard drive has a capacity of 40 gigabytes, capable of storing the instructions to build 53 people.
Where have I gone wrong in my calculation?
Neatly 4=2^2 so all bases can be represented in binary with only two bits.
e.g.
A: 00
T: 01
C: 10
G: 11
In the human genome there are (according to wikipedia) about 3 billion base pairs. If each base is substituted by its binary representation the human genome becomes 6 billion bits long, or 6 gigabits.
There are eight bits to a byte.
So 6 gigabits becomes 750000000 bytes or 0.75 gigabytes.
The human genome is 0.75GB
My hard drive has a capacity of 40 gigabytes, capable of storing the instructions to build 53 people.
Where have I gone wrong in my calculation?
posted by ʎ at 3:48 AM
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