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Information capacity of a bacterium

… and from the same page as the last post, biologist Henry Linschitz suggested that a three-dimensional representation of a bacterium would require 10^13 (10,000,000,000,000) bits.

Based on my (possibly problematic) math, that’s 1.13686837721616 terabytes.  If it was a cube made of 2×2 Lego bricks, one for each bit, it would measure approximately 551 x 551 x 678′ (168,046 x 168,046 x 206,826 mm) – about 7 stories high.

Original paper titled “Number of Bits Represented by A Single Bacterium” from Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology, pg 252.

Image via: Brickset

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Amino Acids and Proteins as Texts


Molecular diagram of a variety of amino acids

James Gleick strikes here again, this time a short mention of radiologist Henry Quastler (University of Illinois) suggesting that “an amino acid has the information content of a written word and a protein molecule the information content of a paragraph” (page 289).


Visualization of the structure of a protein (specifically Putative Acetyltransferase)

This of course suggests the reading of texts into amino acids/proteins and vice versa.

Gleick’s notes cite this as from a paper by Quastler called “Some of the Physicists Now Turning to Biology” in Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology, 1953 – an intial search of Google and JSTOR didn’t find the paper.

Amino acid diagram via: New England BioLab
Protein visualization via: Topsan.org