I'm interested in finding the most appropriate analogy of a data structure to describe organization/access of genetic information in cells. We humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes - each pair consisting of a maternal and paternal chromosome. Having pairs make sense - not unlike RAID 1 mirroring: it provides a backup in case of loss of genetic material.
However, the utility of genetic material written on separate, discrete bodies - "chromosomes", or "drives/disks" - does not quite make sense to me. Does this enable more efficient access of information? For instance, bacterial genomes are completely circular - all of their information are on one really long piece of DNA.
I'm interested to know if there is an anthology of term indexing, in computer science literature, to study access of information in a biological context. Is there any exhaustive resource someone can point me to on data structures that facilitate fast look-up of terms and writing of terms?
