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Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth. Whether there is any creature out there capable of making sense of the instructions in my genome, well, that's another question.

If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library.

Incidentally, think about the ramifications of storing data on light waves that can be stopped and started at the speed of light.

The fact is that proprietary databases don't work for such basic and broadly needed information as the sequence of the human genome.

We have about 100 million cells interconnected in our brains. They communicate with one another through electrical signals.

The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along with information theory. DNA is the quintessential information molecule, the most advanced message processor at the cellular level - an alphabet and a code, 6 billion bits to form a human being.

Genes that underlie the capacity to receive, use and transmit information are the evolving properties.

Before the Human Genome Project, most scientists assumed, based on our complex brains and behaviors, that humans must have around 100,000 genes; some estimates went as high as 150,000.

I thought we'd just sequence the genome once and that would be sufficient for most things in people's lifetimes. Now we're seeing how changeable and adaptable it is, which is why we're surviving and evolving as a species.

As a Christian, but also as a scientist responsible for overseeing the Human Genome Project, one of my concerns has been the limits on applications of our understanding of the genome. Should there be limits? I think there should. I think the public has expressed their concern about ways this information might be misused.