- Protein-coated disc
Protein-Coated Disc (PCD) is a theoretical optical disc technology currently being developed by Professor Venkatesan Renugopalakrishnan, formerly of
Harvard Medical School andFlorida International University . PCD would greatly increase storage overHolographic Versatile Disc optical disc systems. It involves coating a normalDVD with a special light-sensitiveprotein made from a genetically altered microbe, which would in principle allow storage of up to 50Terabyte s on one disc.Working with theJapan ese NEC Corporation, Renugopalakrishnan's team created a prototype device and estimated in July, 2006 that aUSB disk would be commercialised in 12 months and a DVD in 18 to 24 months. [cite web
date=2006-07-07
url=http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1680304.htm
title=DVD uses bug protein to store data
publisher=ABC
accessdate=] However, no further information has been forthcoming since that time.The technology uses the photosynthetic pigment
bacteriorhodopsin created from bacteria.Technology
The information in such discs would be highly dense, due to being stored in proteins that are only a few nanometres across. However, a method to address individual protein molecules to read and write information to and from them would have to be developed in order to achieve the theoretical 50 TB capacity. Practically, capacity would probably be limited by the size that addressing light can be focused to, so a DVD-sized disc might be able to hold ~50 TB, or perhaps ~240 TB if
nearfield optics were used.ee also
*
DVD
*HD DVD
*Blu-ray Disc
*Tapestry Media
* HVD
*3D optical data storage
*Protein References
External links
* [http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/12/protein-coated-discs-could-enable-50tb-capacities/ Protein Coated Discs Engadget]
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