{"id": "card_n_49d1ebe5ba6a", "kind": "note", "title": "The genome as information — and the algebra of a population", "body": "Two bits per base, sealed: log(4)/log(2) = 2 — so the ~3.2 billion base pairs of the human\ngenome hold ~6.4 billion bits, about 800 MB, a large app's worth of code in every cell (https://narrowhighway.com/s/632994d71f8e8f5559fcdb14b7802295952064adf5fb410613686c3526381bdd).\n23 chromosome pairs make 46 (sealed). And a whole population obeys simple algebra: Hardy-Weinberg\nsays (p+q)^2 = p^2 + 2pq + q^2, so for a recessive allele at frequency 0.3, carriers run\n2·0.7·0.3 = 0.42 of the population — sealed (https://narrowhighway.com/s/ff5890c84d43e6059e004eae6b6f5d2ee7c0c0e44659963dd8ff61fc34ca0ca2 ). The information view is exact; what the\ninformation MEANS (which sequence folds to which working protein) is empirical biology, and\nprotein folding from sequence is itself an open hard problem the map would mark INCOMPLETE.", "source": {"label": "Concordance assay — 2026-07-09", "url": "https://narrowhighway.com/s/f8a7bbf4b8b3da9cadedda1d5228d6aa1683c60a1d79c3655c4eae419119276c", "ref": "genetics", "authority_tier": "engine_derived"}, "shelf": "science", "box": "genetics", "bands": ["genome", "information", "2 bits", "800 mb", "hardy-weinberg", "chromosomes", "allele", "shannon", "protein folding"], "connections": [], "author": "engine", "created_at": "2026-07-10T01:49:27.180353+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10T01:49:27.180353+00:00", "visibility": "public", "lifecycle_stage": "public", "volatility": "permanent", "surface": "secular", "metrics": {"paperclips_count": 0, "helpful_count": 0, "not_helpful_count": 0, "cite_count": 0, "walks_through_count": 0, "flagged_count": 0}, "source_hash": "9139d083ec78640bb2fcc017361c526bceeafcac0bb94060e07256bb9a331a5b"}