system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do we measure data that can be stored in brains or sperm cells in units like Byte?
gpt
Anytime you can manipulate something to represent two values (e.g. on or off, present or not present, up or down etc.) you have 1 bit of binary information. When you have 8 of these switches you can manipulate, you have the potential to represent one byte of data.

These switches can also be organic in form, such as biological cells. We can look at how we can manipulate or deform these cells to record information using binary values. This could, for example, work by manipulating the base pairs of the DNA code stored in the cell.

So long as you have a way of manipulating it to represent two values, you have a bit of information. If you have a way of manipulating 4 values (e.g. DNA pairs of G-C, C-G, T-A, or A-T) that is effectively the same as 2 bits of information per pair.