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Genetic Database Hits One Billion Entries

ChocSnorfler writes to tell us that the Sanger Institute is reporting that their Genetic Record Database has hit one billion entries, making it the world's largest. From the announcement: "The Trace Archive is a store of all the sequence data produced and published by the world scientific community, including the Sanger Institute's own prodigious output as a world-leading genomics institution. To grasp how much data is in the Archive, if it were printed out as a single line of text, it would stretch around the world more than 250 times. Printing it out on pages of A4 would produce a stack of paper two-and-a-half times as high as Mount Everest. The Archive is 22 Terabytes in size and doubling every ten months."

30 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. w00t! Opensource genetics! by themysteryman73 · · Score: 2, Funny

    genetic information of organisms - mice, fish, flies, bacteria and, of course, humans... All the data are freely available to the world scientific community (http://trace.ensembl.org/) Sweet, now I can finally build myself that fleet of flying super monkeys I've always wanted!

  2. For God's sake, don't print it! by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Some dumbass is always printing 300 pages of documents and hogging the printer. Forchrissakes, just figure out what pages you need and print those! Asshole.

    The amount of data here is really enormous. To put it in perspective, if you lined up 7143 blondes, the number of strands of hair present would approximately equal the number of entries in this database.

    1. Re:For God's sake, don't print it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I love those things: "To put this in perspective, here's another image or figure that won't fit in the human mind either." They always clear those huge numbers right up for me.

      At least your name is "BadAnalogyGuy", which gives you a better excuse than the story submitter.

    2. Re:For God's sake, don't print it! by margaret · · Score: 5, Funny

      Some dumbass is always printing 300 pages of documents and hogging the printer. Forchrissakes, just figure out what pages you need and print those! Asshole.

      Like when I was in grad school, I remember our IT guy was hopping mad because he had to come in on a sunday to reboot the server because some dumbass decided to print the entire mouse chromomome 22 sequence. Something about a spool file and crashing his server...

    3. Re:For God's sake, don't print it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I think you mean 'who is' not 'whose'. So yes, you are!

  3. How many LOCs is that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I could make this sentence wrap around the world a zillion times if I used 10^100 point text.

  4. i love meaningless data by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

    "To grasp how much data is in the Archive, if it were printed out as a single line of text, it would stretch around the world more than 250 times. Printing it out on pages of A4 would produce a stack of paper two-and-a-half times as high as Mount Everest. "

    I have twice that much data on my 128k thumbdrive, if printed out in 72 point font size.

    Anyone care to translate this into volkswagens, or libraries of congress?

    1. Re:i love meaningless data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      you have a 128k thumbdrive? Does it use the serial port?

    2. Re:i love meaningless data by Snarfangel · · Score: 3, Funny

      Anyone care to translate this into volkswagens, or libraries of congress?

      I keep forgetting, how many Volkswagens to the Ferrari?

      --
      This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
    3. Re:i love meaningless data by davidsyes · · Score: 2, Funny

      Can anyone translate that into strands of 1/4 inch-long pubic hair, or SPI (density in strands per cubic inch)? Maybe we can turn humans into mink or felt. Imagine the hygiene business stock if you could put this hair-densification stuff into the food and water supply. I hear Pantene helps women's hair grow FAST. I've been using it to see what would happen, and my own hair seems to be growing faster than normal. But, it could be coincidental. (I wonder if Pantene has bull sperm/semen in it like the hair clubs for bald men purportedly does. I'd read in GQ or one of those uuber-sexual mags that it did. So, I dog-eared one of my friend's magazines so his guests would probably notice it and read the article.

      But, speaking of thumbnails, can anyone translate that information density into THUMBNAILS or corneas or eyeball spheres worth of information?

      Next: Subspace Neural Network...

      --
      Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
    4. Re:i love meaningless data by Frogbert · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, but to put it in some perspective. It would take over 6 minutes for a japanese school girl to type it all out on her phone.

    5. Re:i love meaningless data by Brent+Spiner · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you choose a fixed-width font such as 12 point Courier about 75 letters fit on a single line with half inch margins. This means that each letter is about 2.54 millimeters in length. The earth is 24900 miles in circumference that means that it would take 15776640000 letters to stretch around the earth.

      If we take a 1967 Volkswagen to be a measuremeant of length then it is 1606.01 times larger than a single letter so it would take 9823500.48 Volkswagi to tailgate around the earth. Multiply that by 250 and you get ~ 2.455875x10^9 Volkswagens.

      Since it is quite easy to convert Volkswagens to Library of Congresses I won't go into further detail.

      --
      Reality test... am I dreaming?
    6. Re:i love meaningless data by mrscorpio · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Volkswagi"

      I just threw up in my mouth.

  5. If printed out... by MarkusQ · · Score: 5, Funny

    if it were printed out as a single line of text, it would stretch around the world more than 250 times. Printing it out on pages of A4 would produce a stack of paper two-and-a-half times as high as Mount Everest

    Did anybody else think "Wow, I've got a great idea for a mural for the space elevator!"

    Anybody?

    Uh, well, it's late...

    --MarkusQ

  6. Torrent? by mendaliv · · Score: 5, Funny

    Would somebody please torrent it?

  7. If we're not careful.. by AkA+lexC · · Score: 2, Funny
    The Archive is 22 Terabytes in size and doubling every ten months

    This enormous archive will devour us all.. ARGHH!
    --
    -AlexC
  8. A4 paper wouldn't work. by suso · · Score: 3, Funny

    Printing it out on pages of A4 would produce a stack of paper two-and-a-half times as high as Mount Everest.

    You can't do that with ordinary A4 paper. You need to reinforce it on the sides at least so it won't tumble over. Plus, I doubt the paper would sit still with the high winds once it gets above a few thousand feet. Sheesh.

  9. Anybody know what DB Software they're using? by Vorondil28 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Something tells me a 22TB MS Access table just wouldn't cut it. :-P

    --
    This sig rocks the casbah.
  10. Which Database? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Are they using the latest MSSQL 2005 beta 3?

  11. Re:22TB is nothing. by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm pretty sure storing humans on your hard drive is illegal.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  12. Re:So tired. So very, very tired. Of that. by jmv · · Score: 4, Funny

    More nerdly examples, please.

    - It would require 100,000 liters of ink to write down all the 1's and 0's
    - It would take 400 years to transmit it over a 14.4 kbps modem
        * Requiring about 10 Giga Joules
    - If each bit was encoded on a single hydrogen atom, the whold db would weight about 0.1 mg
    - If ones are transmitted as a single (infrared) photon, it would take 0.01 Joules to transmit the whole db
        * You could transmit it 100 times with the energy of a mouse trap
    - It would require about one year for a million monkeys to type it in (without having to guess)

  13. Wrong standards by sehryan · · Score: 2, Funny

    These people are obviously not aware that the standard unit of measurements for the press is Rhode Island and Texas. Without phrasing it in these units, I have no idea how much data that really is.

    --
    The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
  14. So what? by Anon.Pedant · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm not impressed. I already have genetic material all over my computer.

    (Oops, did I just admit something bad?)

  15. A lot of data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Printing it out on pages of A4 would produce a stack of paper two-and-a-half times as high as Mount Everest.

    Tapping it out on morse code would take 10000 drummers 5 years!

    Expressing it in smoke signals would burn 100 amazon rain forests!

    Putting it in fortune cookies would require flour and sugar with the same approximate mass as the moon!

    And sending it in semaphore would require every man, woman and child on the planet to signal nonstop with every flag ever made until the year 2010!

    That's a lot of data.

  16. I've read the whole thing.. by tinrobot · · Score: 4, Funny

    I won't give away the ending, but my favorite part is:

    ctattggacttggaatcggatattggacacttggaatcggata

    1. Re:I've read the whole thing.. by Cygnus78 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I won't give away the ending, but my favorite part is: ctattggacttggaatcggatattggacacttggaatcggata

      Man that's disgusting. Please keep your fantasies to yourself.

  17. This could only be.. by musakko · · Score: 3, Funny
    The Archive is 22 Terabytes in size and doubling every ten months.

    Go FoxPro!

  18. in other words... by avi33 · · Score: 3, Funny

    All your base (pairs) belong to us.

  19. Re:22TB is nothing. by roesti · · Score: 3, Funny
    I'm pretty sure storing humans on your hard drive is illegal.
    Well, the HIAA keeps saying that, but the Digital Human Copyright Act (DHCA) is pretty vague.

    In the meantime, you can still get the genetic layouts of other animals on eDonkey. (groan)

  20. Re:w00t! Opensource genetics! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Got a torrent?
    I want to print it out to read off screen...