Question about the encoding of information

From my perspective (that is, not as a biologist), there is very little difference between the coding of DNA sequences and sequences of numbers stored on a hard drive.

In my limited understanding, in DNA there are two intertwined helixes that have billions of bases connecting them. The two connecting points on the two helixes are called base pairs. Between two base pairs are a sequence of nucleotides, of which there are four types: adenine, ctyosine, guanine, and thymine. These nucleotides are commonly abbreviated by the letters A, C, G, and T.

Here is one base-pair sequence: ATCGATTGAGCTCTAGCG (from the wiki article on base pairs).

Since there are four symbols used, biologists could have used a base-4 numbering system, using the digits 0, 1, 2, and 3 instead of the letters A,C, G, and T.

On a hard drive or in the memory of a computer, there are strings of 0s and 1s that can represents letters or numeric data of various types. It's a simple matter to translate from one number system (base-4 or the letters A, C, G, and T) to a binary system (base-2), so the base pairs in DNA could be represented as strings of binary numbers, and likewise, the binary strings in a computer could be represented by strings fo A, C, G, and T symbols. The reason computers don't use these symbols is that it's much easier to make a device that can be in one of two states (on/off or high voltage/low voltage) in comparison to a device that can be in one of four states.

BTW, back in the 80s or so there was a movie titled "GATTACA" that had something to do with the nucleotides in DNA.

Exactly. When I write C-A-T, readers who are able to read English know that these symbols represent a feline animal (as one possible meaning).

 

You can encode information in almost any way you want. You can carve it into a tree, paint it on a canvas, mold it into shapes, change the polarity of magnetic domains, and many more. Note that 'information' is actually more nuanced that you might imagine. See this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

You're a few years off. It was 1997: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Gattaca
Since you're within an order of magnitude, we'll call it 'good enough'.

 

If that's a joke, it's over my head. If not, it's still over my head.