Chandigarh, September 20
In a major achievement in the field of nanotechnology, Chandigarh-based Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO) has developed a DNA-based encryption which will prove invaluable in the field of defence, spying and related matters.
This was announced by Director of the CSIO, Dr R.P. Bajpai, in a talk with TNS here today. “We have already applied for an international patent in this regard”. Any piece of information, photographs, maps can be encrypted and hidden in a DNA sequence which renders it undetectable by unauthorised personnel.
Painstaking research and development over a period of time has led the CSIO to a situation where all the 256 American System of Computing-II (ASC-II) characters have been defined in terms of four bases (A,T,G,C). Using a dedicated software developed at CSIO, any text or picture in the form of digital information can be encrypted into DNA sequence.
Dr Bajpai discloses that “we have also defined a number of systems and arithmetical operations in terms of DNA sequences. This is an important achievement towards molecular ultra-high density memory device”. For example, the National Flag can be coded in terms of a DNA sequence of 7924 bases i.e. in our single genome (containing 6.4 billion bases) the Tricolour can be copied almost a million times. The space occupied by a genome is only few nm3. (see photo)
At CSIO, he says, “We are studying electrical behaviour of various segments of DNA to understand their information processing capability. This study is the first of its kind and will have tremendous impact in realizing biomolecular electronics and sensors which nature has perfected in millions of years.
“For these studies we are binding different DNA sequences on micro/nano electrodes. We are also exploring the various ways in which DNA sequences can be hybridized with semiconductors to have dedicated processors with ultra-high speed and density”.
DNA, says Dr Bajpai, is the best molecular electronic device ever produced on the earth because DNA can store, process and provide information for growth and maintenance of living system. All living species are as a result of single cell produced during reproduction. In most of the cases, this single cell does not have most of the materials required for fabricating a living system but contains all the information and processing capability to fabricate living spaces by taking materials from environment, for example, fabrication of baby from Zygote which contains rearranged DNA sequences of parents. DNA is nothing but ready to use nanowire of 2 nm and can be synthesized in any sequence of four
bases i.e. ATGC.
