Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Project principle

CUHK iGEM 2010 team is formed by a group of undergraduates and instructors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Our project is to create a brand new biological cryptography system. We harness the incredible adaptability of simple organisms in the tortured environment to make sure that the message stored can be left undisturbed regardless of any environmental changes. Employing a specially people are denied access to obtain the information.

Quick fact: 

In our system, 1g of E. coli can store max 931,322 GB data. 

In comparison, typical hard disk can store 1-4GB/gram.

As the leakage of national confidential information and personal privacy become more and more serous, we believe that this biological cryptography can help protect the important information of the mankind. The innovative cryptography system heralds a new era of information security.

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T

his 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.

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?

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