[extropy-chat] What is the smallest genome possible?

[John K Clark]

A bacteria with the smallest ever genome has been discovered, this cell has 
only 159,662 base-pairs of DNA. That's only 80K of information. Hell there 
have been some posts to this list bigger than that; and this is a living 
thing. It might be worthwhile to study it to find the bare minimum needed 
for life, perhaps they could try removing one of its 182 genes to see if 
they could get something even smaller.

For more see:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061012184647.htm

  John K Clark