Human DNA is 1.5 GB of information (at two bits per base (T,G,A,C))((6 billion bases * 2 bits/base) / (8 bits/byte)) = 1.5 GB
(I'm ignoring entropy-coding compression potential, which is likely to be moderate.)
However, all humans on the planet today have genetic sequences that differ by an amount that can be expressed in fewer than 40 MB.
I think it's a little bit misleading, though, to say that the information payload of the human sperm is only '37.5 MB', because, without the benefit of the knowledge that humans have similar sequences, and without the benefit of the full 1.5 GB of a particular person's sequence (serving as a reference, to be able to encode the 40 MB difference), 40 MB would only be 2.7% of the actual information contained in a human sperm.
It's rather amazing that a human's genetic identity can fit on a $1 USB flash drive, or can be downloaded from a web site just like a movie file. And it's even more amazing that the genetic difference between any two people in the whole world would fit in a single 13 Megapixel uncompressed photograph, or a single 4096x4096 RGB888 texture.
Also, the fact that there are essentially 'only' ((40 MB * 8 bits/byte) / (2 bits/base)) = 160 million variables (of the form 'Xi={T,G,A,C}') that differ among us all, discovering genetic 'cause and effect' is becoming a reality.
Here's a reference supporting the '1.5 GB' claim (and suggests that the genetic distance between humans might fit in 20 MB):
www.genetic-future.com/2008/06/how-much-data-is-human-genome-it.html
(,
Tue 25 Dec 2012, 9:55,
archived)
(I'm ignoring entropy-coding compression potential, which is likely to be moderate.)
However, all humans on the planet today have genetic sequences that differ by an amount that can be expressed in fewer than 40 MB.
I think it's a little bit misleading, though, to say that the information payload of the human sperm is only '37.5 MB', because, without the benefit of the knowledge that humans have similar sequences, and without the benefit of the full 1.5 GB of a particular person's sequence (serving as a reference, to be able to encode the 40 MB difference), 40 MB would only be 2.7% of the actual information contained in a human sperm.
It's rather amazing that a human's genetic identity can fit on a $1 USB flash drive, or can be downloaded from a web site just like a movie file. And it's even more amazing that the genetic difference between any two people in the whole world would fit in a single 13 Megapixel uncompressed photograph, or a single 4096x4096 RGB888 texture.
Also, the fact that there are essentially 'only' ((40 MB * 8 bits/byte) / (2 bits/base)) = 160 million variables (of the form 'Xi={T,G,A,C}') that differ among us all, discovering genetic 'cause and effect' is becoming a reality.
Here's a reference supporting the '1.5 GB' claim (and suggests that the genetic distance between humans might fit in 20 MB):
www.genetic-future.com/2008/06/how-much-data-is-human-genome-it.html