Information Storage
The information storage capacity of DNA is staggering.
The total DNA in all the cells of a human being
would extend more than 10 times the distance to Pluto if stretched out in a line.
Each individual normal
human cell contains more than a meter of DNA (for a salamander cell it is about 10 meters!), and
this is capable of encoding about 4.5 billion pieces of information (bits)
in the sequence of bases on the double helix.
From one point of view this is enormous, representing the information content of several hundred books.
From another point of view, it is surprisingly small, since this amount of information would fit on a
single CDROM that you could carry in your pocket!