An estimate of the total DNA in the biosphere

Modern whole-organism genome analysis,in combination with biomass estimates,allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere: 5.3 × 1031 (±3.6 × 1031) megabases (mb) of dna. given conservative estimates regarding dna transcription rates,this information content suggests biosphere processing speeds exceeding yottanops values (1024 nucleotide operations per second). although prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals,we find that the information content of prokaryotes is similar to plants and animals at the present day. this informationbased approach offers a new way to quantify anthropogenic and natural processes in the biosphere and its information diversity over time. © 2015 landenmark et al.