The article massively undersells the information content of the genome in several key ways. A non-comprehensive list of these (before my morning coffee forgive me) includes:
- Combinatorial effect (massive) of different alleles in complex systems
Overall, it's not sensible to compare a linear sequence of bits, like a CD (sibling comment) or DVD (the article), to the linear sequence of the genome and conclude that their information content, based on length alone, is in any way comparable.
- DNA methylation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation)
- Interactions of alleles (what article refers to as the "two versions of each base pair")
- Duplications, deletions, inversions, and other structural variations (https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Structural-Variatio...)
- Physical proximity interactions in 3-dimensional space (https://cmbl.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s11658-023-0...)
- Combinatorial effect (massive) of different alleles in complex systems
Overall, it's not sensible to compare a linear sequence of bits, like a CD (sibling comment) or DVD (the article), to the linear sequence of the genome and conclude that their information content, based on length alone, is in any way comparable.