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How much information is in DNA?
While answering how much information is in DNA may seem straightforward, it actually requires a wild odyssey through information theory and molecular biology.
This is an article that just appeared in Asimov Press, who kindly agreed that I could publish it here and also humored my deep emotional need to use words like “Sparklepuff”. We’ll meet some strange characters, including genomic compression algorithms based on deep learning, retrotransposons, and Kolmogorov complexity. Ultimately, I’ll argue that the intuitive idea of information in a genome is best captured by a new definition of a “bit”—one that’s unknowable with our current level of scientific knowledge.
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