2020/02/21 by Robert N. Grass, Reinhard Heckel, Christophe Dessimoz +1 · 6 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · #Algorithms and Data Compression #Biology #Cellular Automata and Applications #Computational biology #Computer network #Computer science #Computer security #DNA #DNA and Biological Computing #DNA sequencing #Encryption #Gene #Genetics #Genome #Genomics #Key (lock) #Massive parallel sequencing
paper · doi:10.1002/ange.202001162
published in Angewandte Chemie 132(22), 8554-8558 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2020/02/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract 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.