1GB for DNA is a lower bound. That’s how much it takes to store the abstract base pair representation. There’s lots of other information you’d need to actually build a human and a lot of it is common to all life. Like, DNA spends most of its time not in the neat little X shapes that happen during reproduction, but in coiled up little tangles. A lot of the information is stored in the 3D shape and in the other regulatory machinery attached to the chromosomes.
If all you had was a human genome, the best you could do would be to do a lot of simulation to reconstruct all the other stuff. Probably doable, but would require a lot of “relearning.”
The brain also uses DNA for storing information on the form of methylation patterns in individual neurons.
1GB for DNA is a lower bound. That’s how much it takes to store the abstract base pair representation. There’s lots of other information you’d need to actually build a human and a lot of it is common to all life. Like, DNA spends most of its time not in the neat little X shapes that happen during reproduction, but in coiled up little tangles. A lot of the information is stored in the 3D shape and in the other regulatory machinery attached to the chromosomes.
If all you had was a human genome, the best you could do would be to do a lot of simulation to reconstruct all the other stuff. Probably doable, but would require a lot of “relearning.”
The brain also uses DNA for storing information on the form of methylation patterns in individual neurons.