DNA Cryptography and Information Security

DNA cryptography is an interdisciplinary approach to encryption that bridges biochemistry and cybersecurity by converting data into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequences. In biological systems, the combinations of three out of four types of nucleotides (A = adenine, T = thymine, C = cytosine, and G = guanine) correspond to a single amino acid which is added in a chain to build proteins. In DNA cryptography, information is processed into binary which is mapped onto one of four corresponding nucleotides to generate a sequence representative of the information. This encoded sequence is spliced into “cover DNA”, which has a standard sequence, and then mutated to form a hybrid DNA sequence that resembles natural DNA. The DNA strand can then be synthesized in a lab and stored physically. Compared to conventional storage media which store memory at 10^12 nm^3/bit, DNA is incredibly space-efficient and able to store at 1 nm^3/bit. It is so efficient that it can theoretically store all the data in the world within a few milligrams, since a single milligram of DNA contains 10^21 nucleotides, equating to 10^8 TB of data.