this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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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.
So what would the total amount of information in an average ejaculation be? Dumb it down for me, please? Lol
97,000 TB
... Jesús Cristo
Surely after some lossless compression this could be improved drastically
The data would compress well, true. However, the DNA in the cell doesn't have anything like data compression, and it makes the calculations more complex, so it's only fair to compare uncompressed sizes.
am i dumb or shouldn't it be 2 times 3.1 billion bits, so 6.2 gigabits according to what you said
The full genome is 3.1 billion base pairs (6.2 Gbit = 775 MByte). Each parent (i.e., one egg or one sperm) contributes half of that, 1.55 billion base pairs (3.1 Gbit = 388 MByte).