Bacterial DVD Holds 50TB

CAMags writes to tell us that a Harvard Professor is claiming to have developed a new variant of a protein called bacteriorhodopsin (bR) that, when layered on a DVD, can store up to 50TB of data. From the article: "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 color before returning to its 'ground state.'"

Comments

Re:I read this in a science book

[detritus`]

Creating an RNA sequence is not that hard, nor transcribing it to DNA (heck, its just as easy to build the DNA sequence) The problem is building one that's useful, that where the protein folding problem comes in (See folding@home) becuase what the point of having DNA/RNA if the encoded protein is useless?