{"id":213566,"date":"2025-05-08T13:08:47","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-much-information-is-in-dna"},"modified":"2025-05-08T13:08:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:08:47","slug":"how-much-information-is-in-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-much-information-is-in-dna","title":{"rendered":"How Much Information is in DNA?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-much-information-is-in-dna.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Such questions quickly run into the limits of knowledge for both biology and computer science. To answer them, we need to figure out what exactly we mean by \u201cinformation\u201d and how that\u2019s related to what\u2019s happening inside cells. In attempting that, I will lead you through a frantic tour of information theory and molecular biology. We\u2019ll meet some strange characters, including genomic compression algorithms based on deep learning, retrotransposons, and Kolmogorov complexity.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, I\u2019ll argue that the intuitive idea of information in a genome is best captured by a new definition of a \u201cbit\u201d \u2014 one that\u2019s unknowable with our current level of scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Such questions quickly run into the limits of knowledge for both biology and computer science. To answer them, we need to figure out what exactly we mean by \u201cinformation\u201d and how that\u2019s related to what\u2019s happening inside cells. In attempting that, I will lead you through a frantic tour of information theory and molecular biology. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,41,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-information-science","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}