And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Three awe-inspiring biology facts

Ever since Antoine van Leeuwenhoek discovered teeny tiny “animacules” in a little blob of water, our understanding of the microbial world has grown by leaps and bounds. Some of these discoveries are so astounding, that they make one wonder and doubt our raison d’etre — not that we need any additional help from biology!

Our guts contain “foreign” bacteria which work tirelessly, day and night, to procure essential nutrients from food and help us stay alive. Now consider this: While an adult has around 10 trillion human cells, (s)he has over 100 trillion of these gut bacteria. The immigrants outnumber the natives by a full order of magnitude! To borrow a thought from Jessica Snyder Sachs’ Good Germs Bad Germs, we might serve as nothing more than a shuttle for our gut bacteria as they travel through space and time. In addition, researchers in Belgium and Netherlands have published empirical evidence that our moods are influenced, perhaps even controlled, by these non-human entities. Have you ever made an important decision on your gut feeling? Food for thought, eh?

If we delve deeper into one of the trillions of human cells, we would come across really long filaments tightly wrapped around lots of spools, just like a grandma’s thread box. Meet the DNA! These long strings, tightly wrapped around histones and scaffolding proteins (aka the spools), contain all the information needed to manufacture a factory-fresh human being. Considering that we are fairly complicated beings, a curious dilettante would expect the human DNA to be as long as a boring read. (S)he would be correct, though only partially. Our DNA amounts to a staggering 3 billion units (i.e., nucleotide base pairs formed by A, C, G and T). However, this pales in comparison to the unicellular amoeba (Amoeba dubia) which contains 670 billion units, ~220x humans. Even the trumpet lily flowers (Lillium longiflorum) contain 90 billion units, or 30x humans. Perhaps, that’s why they are so beautiful!

So far, we as a species seem to be getting crushed at the microbiological olympics. But don’t be disheartened. I promise that the last fact will give you a newfound sense of pride. Let’s go! Think about how much memory does this phone, laptop, or whatever device you are on contains. Now think about how much memory would all such devices across the planet (and near-planet orbits) contain? A whitepaper published by IDC estimated that the total generated data has grown from 4 Zettabytes in 2010 to 33 Zb in 2018, probably fueled by cute cat and dog videos. At this rate, we might run out of storage space over the next decade. DNA could be a possible solution - 33 Zb of data could be stored in a mere 15gm of DNA! Yes, you read it right. Only 15 gm to store all the world’s information. We, with our billions of DNA units across trillions of cells contain ~ 60gm of DNA. Thats enough to store all the data on earth four times over. Isn't that an enlightening thought?

The information storage capacity of DNA is serious business. Companies like Oxford Nanopore have created a palm-sized device which can be plugged into a computer to “read” DNA on the go. This gives rise to the possibility of using carbon instead of silicon to store information. Yes, the technology is slow and error-prone, and yes, the “write” part could only happen in machines which are closer to a mainframe from the 1960’s. But cool technological advancements and serious money is rapidly bringing this vision closer to reality. More on this on my next posts — stay tuned. And in the meantime, don’t think twice before sharing that compilation of animal fails!