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.

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).

Each base-pair requires two bits, not four. Picking an arbitrary convention: 00 = A, 01 = T, 10 = G, 11 = C.

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.

There’s still a few days left to file comments objecting to the change. Link in the article.

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.