Protein coated disc (PCD) is an optical disc technology currently developed by Professor Venkatesan Renugopalakrishnan, former Harvard Medical School and Florida International University. The PCD would greatly increase storage on Holographic Versatile Disc (HDD) systems. This is a normal DVD coated with a special light-sensitive protein made from a genetically modified microbe, which in principle allows storing up to 50 terabytes in one disc. Working with the Japanese NEC Corporation, the Renugopalakrishnan team has created a device prototype and estimated in July 2006 that a USB disk will be marketed in 12 months and a DVD in 18-24 months.
Technology utilizes bacteriophysical photosynthesis pigment.
Information on such disks would be highly dense, due to the storage of proteins that are few nanometers. However, a method to address individual protein molecules to read and write information should be developed to reach the theoretical capacity of 50 TB. In practice, capacity would probably be limited by the light focus size, so a DVD disc might be able to hold ~ 50 GB or maybe ~ 240 GB.
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