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   How  much  disk  storage  would  it  take  to  hold a representation of the genetic information of an
   individual?  Since each rung of the DNA ladder has four possibilities, its state can be stored in two
   bits. Therefore, the three billion base pairs could be stored in approximately 750 megabytes (MB). If
   only  the  protein-encoding regions were stored, the resulting information could be stored in 7.5 MB.
   If only the information that characterizes deviation from some standard reference genome were stored,
   the  result  could  be  encoded  in  about 7.5 kilobytes (KB). Finally, and very importantly, we each
   actually  have  two  copies  of  the  human genome in our cells: one from our father and one from our
   mother,  organized  as  pairs  of chromosomes. This brings the storage required up to about 15 KB. Of
   course, the situation is more complex than this. For example, there are many diseases that are caused
   by  variations  in  parts of the genome that do not code for proteins. But for personalized medicine,
   medical  diagnostics,  and  personal  health  risk  analyses,  it  might be possible to hold a fairly
   complete genetic description of an individual on a couple of floppy disks. (A floppy disk holds about
   a megabyte.)

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This issue of the IBMSJ has some interesting information for people interested in supercomputing as well.

aloha,
charles