Is DNA a more efficient means of storing information than electronic storage devices such as hard disks?
When I said efficient, I was strictly refering to data stored per unit volume. The question came from sheer curiosity, and I have no delusions about storing my music or emails using genetic material. Wikipedia says that the human DNA contains information equivalent to a "book over one billion words long." Approximately how many megabytes is one billion words? Assume that the words are in English and of average length.
Filed under: Alternative Medicine
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Every character contained on a computer is stored in a byte, which is eight bits composed of the binary code which is the basis of all computer processing. Assuming average words to be four letters long, that’s 4 billion characters, or 4 billion bytes. That means a DNA strand holds the equivalent of about 4000 megabytes or about 4 gigabytes. Considering that this is in a single strange of DNA it is a far superior method of data storage to computers.