303
data transfer (mander.xyz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 20 points 5 days ago

3 billion nucleotides, but each nucleotide can be one of 4 bases, meaning that it's 6 billion bits of info, or (6e9 / 8) = 750 MB of data.

But if all of the sequence was used for data, then the sperm wouldn't be a sperm. If we keep the 20,000 coding genes making up ~ 2% of the genome, that still leaves us with (750 * 0.98) 735 MB.

But an organism is more than its gene templates, it also has functional regions where things bind and block things and join other things, and we're not entirely sure what percentage of the non-coding regions this is. I'm gonna go with 80%, and that leaves us with (750 * 0.18) = 135MB

Since the sperm cell is haploid data, it has 23 chromosomes instead of the 46 (23 pairs), so it has half the data redundancy of normal DNA. We might also need to add our own error correcting codes which will reduce some of the space. I'm gonna pull a factor of 3.6 out of my ass, and thus (135 / 3.6) - voila - 37.5 MB

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
303 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

16046 readers
911 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS