Paul, it doesn't matter how many cells there are in the body. The DNA is the same in all the cells.
A single unit of DNA is called a nucleotide.
A nucleotide is made up of a pentose sugar called deoxy ribose, a nitrogenous base and a phosphate group.
Each molecule of deoxyribose has 5 carbon atoms + 10 hydrogen atoms + 4 oxygen atoms
= 19 atoms
There are four kinds of nitrogenous bases in DNA:
Adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine
Adenine has 8 atoms in it
Guanine has 16 atoms
Thymine has 6 atoms
Cytosine has 7 atoms
Phosphate group has about 4 atoms.
the average DNA strand in humans contains about 440 million of these nucleotides.
So, the total number of atoms in the DNA strand would be
440 million x number of atoms in each nucleotide.
that leaves you with this problem.
each nucleotide may have
19 + 8 + 4 = 31 atoms
OR
19+16+4 = 39 atoms
OR
19+6+4= 29 atoms
OR
19+7+4 = 30 atoms.
440 million x any of the above number of atoms = more than 6 billion atoms.
even if there were only 6 billion atoms in a single strand of DNA that only leaves you with 1 BYTE of data for each atom in
the strand , and that does not include the positioning of those 6 billion atoms , you could not place that strand in its correct position.
you could not build a single strand of DNA from 6 GB of data.
This depends on the exact environment in which the cell finds itself when it is first created by division from its parent cell.
But Bill , were not discussing splitting cells , were discussing building a man from stored data.
which is approximately what Orac said.
I don't consider what orac says as having any validity.
