An Estimate of the Total DNA in the Biosphere
Hanna K. E. Landenmark , Duncan H. Forgan, Charles S. Cockell
Published: June 11, 2015 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002168
Fig 1. Storing the total amount of information encoded in DNA in the biosphere, 5.3 × 1031 megabases (Mb), would require approximately 1021 supercomputers with the average storage capacity of the world’s four most powerful supercomputers.
Abstract
Modern whole-organism genome analysis, in combination with biomass estimates, allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere: 5.3 × 1031 (±3.6 × 1031) megabases (Mb) of DNA. Given conservative estimates regarding DNA transcription rates, this information content suggests biosphere processing speeds exceeding yottaNOPS values (1024 Nucleotide Operations Per Second). Although prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals, we find that the information content of prokaryotes is similar to plants and animals at the present day. This information-based approach offers a new way to quantify anthropogenic and natural processes in the biosphere and its information diversity over time.
Citation: Landenmark HKE, Forgan DH, Cockell CS (2015) An Estimate of the Total DNA in the Biosphere. PLoS Biol 13(6): e1002168. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002168
Published: June 11, 2015
Copyright: © 2015 Landenmark et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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Uma brecha para a Teoria do Design Inteligente???
We note that the approach that we propose here (and the analogy of supercomputers) does not necessarily imply a global, Gaia-like superorganism. We merely observe that ultimately all organisms interact with each other and the environment. Thus, the information being processed in the biosphere is interlinked in a large mass of organisms, however one chooses to conceptualise this. It does not have to be considered as a single, self-regulating organism. The manner in which the total information in the biosphere is processed, and the degree to which it is coordinated and interlinked in feedback processes, is another matter, but one that could be investigated using an information-based approach.
We note that the approach that we propose here (and the analogy of supercomputers) does not necessarily imply a global, Gaia-like superorganism. We merely observe that ultimately all organisms interact with each other and the environment. Thus, the information being processed in the biosphere is interlinked in a large mass of organisms, however one chooses to conceptualise this. It does not have to be considered as a single, self-regulating organism. The manner in which the total information in the biosphere is processed, and the degree to which it is coordinated and interlinked in feedback processes, is another matter, but one that could be investigated using an information-based approach.
