This calculation is off by an order of magnitude.
The human genome has about 3.1 billion base pairs. Each sperm has half of that. Ignoring epigenetics, each base pair has four options (A/T/C/G), so it can be represented by two bits each.
All told, that’s 3.1 gigabits = 388 megabytes per gamete.
If you assume an average ejaculation distance of 9 inches and a nominal speed of 15 mph (this is apparently surprisingly well studied) - you get a data transfer rate of 46,500 TB/s.
I once joked I could jizz faster than my shitty internet connection. Guess I was right
Crazy to imagine that some Tylenol can corrupt so much data.
That’s why I always call it a packet storm. “Girl, I’m about to DDOS that booty.”
Pff I’d be happy to reach a megabit at my age.
Wouldn’t quaternary storage need a different naming scheme?
It’s just a lot of copies of the same information. Not very efficient.
The dna sequence of each sperm is actually unique, and are thus not considered part of your body according to your immune system. This is why your testes are “immune-privileged”, meaning your white blood cells are not allowed in there.
So not just inefficient but also insecure? Who designed this crap?
Sexual reproduction is designed for variation. You can reduce it with a large amount of inbreeding. Your family, for example.
jk
My mom, my dad, my aunt and my uncle are going to beat you up! The two of them are really strong!
They’re just trying to get a point across.
Top Redundancy
It’s not even. The data integrity algorithm is really kind of crap.
How do they calculate that?
Each DNA base can be represented in 4 bits because there’s only 4 values: A, T, G or C. (This is a simplification because of epigenetic base modifications, but works for now). So just take the length of DNA and multiply by 4 for the amount of bits the data represents. You do have to add up the lengths of all the chromosomes considering that sperm only have one copy of each chromosome, not two. Also factor in that there is no mitochondria in sperm. Lastly, about half of the sperm will be carrying an X and half will be carrying a Y chromosome so just take the length of the (X + Y) / 2 for the sex chromosome. Now just multiply by the amount of sperm in an average ejaculation and you’ll get a good estimate.
How do they ejaculate that?
Each base-pair requires two bits, not four. Picking an arbitrary convention: 00 = A, 01 = T, 10 = G, 11 = C.
To represent 4 values, you only need 2 bits
- 00
- 01
- 10
- 11
This is why a big…hard…drive is important.
More buffer for the
git pushin’
