3 ms·

DNA is less than a few megabytes

• deepsun 4y ago
  No it's about 1.5 Gigabytes. Long answer: https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-memory-size-is-a-humans-DNA https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-memory-size-is-a-humans...
  • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    that is fallacious considering e.g. non-coding DNA see e.g. https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-memory-size-is-a-humans-DNA/answer/Brett-Watters https://www.quora.com/How-many-bytes-memory-size-is-a-humans... the estimate is more like 50MB and the difference between humans of the dozen of MBs. Considering that the brain is just one component of our very complex bodies, that's just a couple of MBs at max allocated to Brain encoding, including data that is needed for constructing the brain structurally, and not encoding a memory or running the runtime. The brain runtime probably has a ~1MB max DNA budget, which is pathetically small. Alhough that is an underesearched topic (there is not even a dedicated wikipedia page), genetic memory is a thing (how do spiders learn to draw the web, some animals know how to walk at birth, to breath, birds innately know how to nest (and some maybe how to fly). Genetic memory is a nice topic and I wonder if we have findings how it manifest (via IRMs, etc) but it's unclear how/where it is encoded given that the DNA budget is very very tight.
• TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  All the more reason to research algorithmic efficiency. It’s a hell of a compact encoding.
  • SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    and the majority of the encoding is probably built into designing the body of which the brain is only a small part.