Genome information Content

D. W. Ross The human genome information content and structure. Hospital Practice, June 15, 49 (1999). 

Information content, (a) How many different 8-mer sequences of DNA are there (Hint There are 16 possible dinucleotides and 64 possible trinucleotides.) (b) How many bits of information are stored in an 8-mer DNA sequence In the E. coli genome In the human genome (c) Compare each of these values with the amount of information that can be stored on a personal computer diskette. A byte is equal to 8 bits. 

Kwok, P. Y., et al., Increasing the information content of STS-based genome maps identifying polymorphisms in mapped STSs. Genomics, 1996. 31(1) p. 123-6. 

Fig. 4. Examples of LOGOs. The information content of the various transcription factors is indicative of the expected frequency of its target sites in the genome. The examples of two well-known factors are presented here for comparison. Based on that, GATA-3 sites are expected to be more frequent (by chance) in the genome than the EGR-1 sites.

Sanger and coworkers determined the complete sequence of the 5386 bases in the DNA of the (/)X174 DNA virus in 1977, just a quarter century after Sanger s pioneering elucidation of the amino acid sequence of a protein. This accomplishment is a landmark in molecular biology because it revealed the total information content of a DNA genome. This tour de force was followed several years later by the determination of the sequence of human mitochondrial DNA, a double-stranded circular DNA molecule containing 16,569 base pairs. It encodes 2 ribosomal RNAs, 22 transfer RNAs, and 13 proteins. In... 

Wakasugi T, Tsudzuki T, Sugiura M. The genomics of land plant chloroplasts Gene content and alteration of genomic information by RNA editing. Photosynthesis Res 2001 70 107-118. 

---