the end of hard drives?
An Indian born scientist in the US is working on developing DVD's which can be coated with a light-sensitive protein and can store up to 50 terabytes (about 50,000 gigabytes) of data.
Professor V Renugopalakrishnan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston has claimed to have developed a layer of protein made from tiny genetically altered microbe proteins which could store enough data to make computer hard disks almost obsolete.
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The light-activated protein is found in the membrane of a salt marsh microbe Halobacterium salinarum and is also known as bacteriorhodopsin (bR). It captures and stores sunlight to convert it to chemical energy. When light shines on bR, it is converted to a series of intermediate molecules each with a unique shape and colour before returning to its "ground state."
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The high-capacity storage devices will be essential to the defence, medical and entertainment industries.
"You have a compelling need that is not going to be met with the existing magnetic storage technology," he added.
However, there's a flip side to it also.
"Science can be used and abused. Making large amounts of information so portable on high-capacity removable storage devices will make it easier for information to fall into the wrong hands. Information can be stolen very quickly. One has to have some safeguards there," he added.
Read the entire story at Yahoo! India News: Technology
