Team:Hong Kong-CUHK

Project Background

With the advancement of electronic engineering after the World War II, more complex ciphers are developed, which plays a pivotal role in the security system of this information explosive age. However mathematical advances result in the weakening or even attack on the ciphers. It makes us rethink whether data storage and encryption in computer is the only way to ensure data safety.

Using bacteria as the information storage device is not a new idea, Bancroft’s group [1] had long proposed the storage of information in DNA early in 2001. Yachie’s group[2] had also been working on the bacterial data storage method in Bacillus subtilis in 2007. In contrast to electronic data storage, the nature of bacterial data storage depends on the bacteria one would pick – Bacillus subtilis would create extra copies of the data, inserting into their genomes which would further safeguard the information; Deinococcus radiodurans, one of the most radioresistant organisms known, would survive even under the electromagnetic pulse and radiation after the nuclear attack. But how are we actually improving the security system by simply storing information in bacteria?

Not re-inventing the wheel

This year in the iGEM 2010 competition, we will use bacteria not only as a biological data storage unit but also to integrate an intrinsic encryption system with it.

Our data storage system is novel. We focus on using multiple bacteria as a parallel data storage model, for which involves the fragmentation of original information into tiny pieces and the incorporation of the fragmented information into the bacteria, which varies greatly from using single bacterial cell as the information storage unit as demonstrated by the previous group. Together with the encryption system, the security of the data is further ensured.

To retrieve the data, the information DNA would be sequenced after isolation from the bacteria. Computational algorithms are designed to resolve the encryption system and the original information could then be recovered.

Expectation/goal

Ultimate storage capacity

Our expectation is high. A droplet of liquid can contain more than a billion bacteria – the potential capacity of this bacterial information storage unit is tremendous.

Setup industrial standard on bacterial information storage

To generalize the bacterial storage system, we will setup the industrial standard of DNA information storage on a parallel basis – multiple bacteria approach, for which is still applicable to single cell storage.

Future security protocol

To take advantage of the nature of the bacteria as well as the intrinsic data encryption system in the bacterial information storage unit, this would be a new way to securely store data forever.

References

[1] Carter Bancroft et al, Long-Term Storage of Information in DNA, Science

[2] Nozomu Yachie et al, Alignment-Based Approach for Durable Data Storage into Living Organisms, Biotechnology Progress. 2007, 23, 501−505