LIFESCIENCE: re: Scientists Code Words into DNA

[ricardo dominguez <rdom@thing.net>]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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   Scientists Code Words into DNA
                     Reuters

                     12:15 p.m.  10.Jun.99.PDT
                     Future spies might need a degree in
                     molecular biology to keep up with the
                     newest secret coding technique devised
                     by scientists in the United States.

                     Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of
                     Medicine in New York have combined DNA
                     technology with encryption.

                     In a report in the science journal Nature
                     on Wednesday, researchers described
                     how they used a three-letter code for
                     the English alphabet based on DNA and
                     encoded an encryption key into human
                     DNA.

                     The encryption technique of
                     steganography conceals a message within
                     a large number of similar objects. It
                     reduces a message to the size of a
                     photographic microdot, a system German
                     spies used during World War II to transmit
                     secret messages.

                     "The first part of our steganography is
                     hiding the message in the DNA and the
                     second part is hiding the existence of the
                     DNA sample containing the message by
                     shrinking it way down to a small dot and
                     putting it in an innocuous letter," said
                     molecular biologist Carter Bancroft.

                     To prove that the secret-message DNA,
                     or SM DNA, worked, Bancroft and his
                     team at Mount Sinai encoded what could
                     have been the most important message
                     during the microdot era -- "June 6
                     invasion: Normandy."

                     That message was never actually sent
                     and the Germans never discovered the
                     date or place of the Allied invasion that
                     led to the end of European campaign in
                     World War II.

                     "I composed that message myself in the
                     spirit of the microdot era as what I felt
                     was probably the most important secret
                     of that time," said Bancroft.

                     "An important basis of our technique is
                     we hide this piece of secret-message
                     DNA so that nobody knows it's there, but
                     the person who is sending it knows the
                     sequence of DNA at the ends [of the
                     message] and the person receiving it also
                     knows the sequence."

                     The recipient can use standard
                     biochemical techniques to detect and
                     read the secret message encoded in the
                     SM DNA.

                     Bancroft wouldn't speculate on whether
                     future spies will adopt the new technique,
                     but even if they don't, he said it could be
                     used to secretly mark objects or valuable
                     items.

                     "There may well turn out to be other
                     ramifications and uses of it that will
                     become apparent only after we and other
                     people have explored the concept."

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