---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed Jun 09 17:27:24 EDT 1999
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: personal encryption?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_365000/365183.stm
Wednesday, June 9, 1999 Published at 19:04 GMT 20:04 UK
Sci/Tech
DNA hides spy message
Espionage has embraced biotechnology with the creation of a
microdot which conceals secret messages in the immense
complexity of human DNA.
Enemies would find the messages "completely undetectable".
The first message sent using the new technique pays tribute to
the original photographic microdots used in World War Two. It
reads: "June 6 Invasion: Normandy".
"Masterpiece of espionage"
The researchers proved the DNA microdot works by pasting the
tiny dots over the full stops in a typed letter, posting it and then
analysing the dots when it arrived back. The message was
received, loud and clear.
In 1946, J Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, described
microdots as "the enemy's masterpiece of espionage".
Catherine Taylor Clelland, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine,
New York, told BBC News Online that the DNA microdot team
had not yet been approached by the FBI.
"But we did wonder if we would get security clearance to have the
paper published in the first place," she said.
Dr Taylor Clelland believes that rise of genetic engineering in
plants and animals could see another use for the technique:
incorporating a genetic "watermark" within the organisms
themselves. "It would remove all counterfeiting."
Message in a marker
The first step of the technique is to use a simple code to convert
the letters of the alphabet into combinations of the four bases
which make up DNA. Next a piece of DNA spelling out the
message is synthetically created.
This is slipped into a normal piece of human DNA, with short
marker sequences added at each end.
The secret message DNA strand is then mixed with ordinary DNA
strands of similar length. The resulting mixture is dried on to
paper which can then be cut into tiny dots. Only one strand in every
30 billion contains the message, making finding the message a
fiendishly difficult task.
"To try and identify it within that complexity, when all the strands
appear absolutely identical would be, we think, virtually impossible,"
says Dr Taylor Clelland.
The key to unravelling the message is knowing what the markers
at each end of the DNA message are. These allow the message
recipient to use a standard biotechnology technique, the polymerase
chain reaction, to multiply only the DNA which contains the message.
This DNA can then be sequenced and the message read.
The team included Professor Carter Bancroft and Viviana Risca
and is published in the journal Nature.
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