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Genomic Encryption of Digital Data Stored in Synthetic DNA
Author(s) -
Grass Robert N.,
Heckel Reinhard,
Dessimoz Christophe,
Stark Wendelin J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
angewandte chemie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1521-3757
pISSN - 0044-8249
DOI - 10.1002/ange.202001162
Subject(s) - encryption , computer science , dna sequencing , dna , computational biology , genomics , massive parallel sequencing , key (lock) , genome , biology , genetics , gene , computer network , computer security
Today, we can read human genomes and store digital data robustly in synthetic DNA. Herein, we report a strategy to intertwine these two technologies to enable the secure storage of valuable information in synthetic DNA, protected with personalized keys. We show that genetic short tandem repeats (STRs) contain sufficient entropy to generate strong encryption keys, and that only one technology, DNA sequencing, is required to simultaneously read the key and the data. Using this approach, we experimentally generated 80 bit strong keys from human DNA, and used such a key to encrypt 17 kB of digital information stored in synthetic DNA. Finally, the decrypted information was recovered perfectly from a single massively parallel sequencing run.