I think you're underestimating the role epigenetic information plays. 1.5 GiB encodes every protein used to build us, sure, but which genes get switched on when and how are sensitive to factors not encoded for in DNA, including the environment of the cell and the fundamental chemistry of biology. Epigenetic information is hard to capture but can profoundly affect how an organism develops; cloned cats, for instance, may show a vastly different fur color and pattern from the original, to cite just a highly visible example.

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dboreham 10 hours ago | parent [-]

That's not additional information. It's a kind of codec for sure, but it's not magic information from nowhere. Like a compression algorithm.

	▲	bitwize 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not information from nowhere, no. But information from outside the genome. To use cats again, colorpoint cats such as Siamese are subject to a temperature-sensitive mutation in the genes which code for fur pigment, so the fur at the coolest parts of their body (face, ears, paws, tail) is the darkest. The colorpoint pattern is not coded for in DNA. It needs input from the environment in order to be expressed. It's not really compression. It's more like, you can write a much shorter Lisp program to do the same task as a C program, but you need the entire Lisp runtime to get it that short.