Extending the analogy found in Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems, it can be shown that my entire genetic makeup can be stored on a single CD-RW.

The human genome is about 3,120,000,000 base pairs long ... four possibilities for a {base pair} means it can be fully represented with two bits; 00 = guanine, 01 = cytosine, and so forth.

This means that there are four base pairs per byte, meaning there are 780 megabytes of data. I'm certain that with a refined method for compressing genetic information (perhaps taking into account junk DNA, and especially the 98% of genetic information that we share with every other human), that we can be squeezed into a small optical medium.


However, it should be said that there are far more economical storage methods: after all, two hundred million half-copies of my genetic information are stored in a teaspoon full of milky substance, given the right mechanical stimulation

Given that only about 5 percent of our DNA base pair sequences actually code for anything, the coding portions of our DNA would occupy a mere 39 MB, or less than half of the storage of a Zip Disk, or one of the two inch PocketZip disks.

Making sense of this, of course, is a non trivial exercise.

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