09-3-2010

"Using windows is like playing FreeSpace 2."

-puck

This really interesting article uses a rough mapping of DNA/RNA sequences to bits and figures out that the RNA of the influenza virus is roughly 3.2 kilobytes. The argument is pretty sound from what I can tell since each letter in a DNA sequence is equivalent to 2 bits. It goes on to explore why the influenza virus is so hard to contain and how its 8 separate strands of RNA makes it so deadly. Good read for those with a computing background or just curious about biology.