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Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 12:52:03 -0400
From: Art Weil <[log in to unmask]>
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To: Conchologists of America List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Salt marsh memory? too strange to pass this up.....
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Dear Peta;-
    Being a living thing, doesn't the individual bacteria tend to die?
        Art

peta bethke wrote:

> Ok, not your usual Conch-L thread BUT  a strange new world ,,,,,, please read on......
>
> High-Protein Computers
>
> Carol Levin
>
> The promise of binary biology.
> Chemistry professor Robert Birge may look as if he's brewing beer in his lab at Syracuse University, but what he's really
> doing is recreating the environment of a salt marsh, the ideal incubator for growing bacteria that make a certain protein
> that shows great promise as the basis for a radically new kind of memory: protein memory.
>
> Imagine a storage medium the size of a sugar cube that stores a terabyte of information. As odd as it may seem, this device
> will be based not on silicon transistors, but on protein molecules that change their shape when exposed to light, enabling
> them to store and transfer massive amounts of data.
>
> While research and development efforts today focus on shrinking the size of silicon transistors, there's also an effort afoot
> to manipulate tiny protein molecules that may turn out to be economical for storing data on a massive scale. According to
> Birge, director of the W.M. Keck Center for Molecular Electronics at Syracuse University, "The size of a single logic gate
> will approach the size of a molecule by about the year 2030."
>
> This branch of bioelectronics emerged in the early 1970s when two scientists observed the structural changes that a protein
> molecule known as bacteriorhodopsin (which is grown by a bacterium that is found in plentiful supply in salt marshes
> throughout the world) exhibited when exposed to light. Later, Soviet scientists recognized the potential of the molecule to
> act as a switch with on and off positions, essentially the same binary function that a silicon transistor serves. While
> silicon alters its state when a current of electricity excites electrons, a protein changes its shape upon absorbing light. A
> laser beam controls the switching in a matrix of memory cells (see diagram).
>
> So would you feel comfortable entrusting your data to a close relative of a protein shake? While an organic entity seems
> susceptible to decay, disease, or a ravenously hungry user, this bacterium and its photosynthetic protein, which thrives
> naturally in the harsh environment of salt marshes, is resilient and stable. Reliability is another issue. "Writing is a
> piece of cake. It's reading that's harder," says Birge. Errors crop up because of noise from the laser interfering with the
> read signal. The goal is to reduce the errors to the level found in silicon.
>
> While in terms of speed, protein-based memory falls somewhere between a high-speed disk drive and semiconductor memory, the
> advantage is in its ability to read data in parallel. Birge anticipates the major impact of bioelectronics will be in the
> area of 3-D memory, which stores data in all three dimensions. Magnetic, flash, semiconductor, and optical memory store data
> only on the surface. "The approach we're taking is to have true volumetric memory where you would gain a 300-fold improvement
> [in density]," says Birge.
>
> The Syracuse lab has been working on prototypes of protein-based 3-D memory and associative memory (used in neural networks
> and artificial intelligence), and is preparing to test memory cards in PCs. The question that hasn't been answered yet is
> whether protein memory is economically viable, especially as flash memory improves.
>
> The first hybrid products that use both semiconductor and protein memory (a system would have, say, 3GB to 24GB of protein
> memory and 4MB of fast RAM) could reach consumers in as soon as eight years, Birge says optimistically.
>
> But these developments depend on a few contingencies. Inexpensive lasers are needed, and some company will have to buy into
> the technology. Birge says that three companies are evaluating the technology now. "They range from very, very large down to
> startup."