Complicated to explain without being able to refernce the figures, but they basically had "symbols" that consisted of short DNA sequences. These were followed by longer sequences that made a "tail" of DNA.
That being said, am I missing something here? Information encryption and image encoding are two entirely separate things.
I'm not paying for the research paper, but the abstract states:
> Parallel computing with molecular finite-state automata and fluorescently labeled DNA molecules has been used to decipher two different images encrypted onto a single DNA chip (see picture). The images were deciphered by a mixture of input molecules that were processed by biomolecular automata, a strategy that potentially offers a huge diversity of encrypted images.
Again, this isn't encryption as I understand it in the traditional 3DES/AES/pgp sense. This is something closer to stenography or encoding/decoding.
Can anyone clear up what exactly is going on here for me?
There's a guy in my deptartment that does stuff like this. The basic idea is to model chemical reactions with DNA. The chemical reactions surprisingly simple (x + y' --> y is essentially an AND gate, for example). In fact, they've even made a C-->chemical reaction compiler!
>the jury is still out on applications
I disagree -- I see huge applications, especially in medicine. There were some people from Caltech that used a DNA-computer to kill cancer cells extremely effectively.
> We’re not talking about a molecular computer that’s comparable to the CPU in your PC, though; rather, the scientists created a simple Turing machine-like finite state automaton.
This part made me laugh a little. The reporter knows what a Turing machine is, but doesn't know about the Church-Turing thesis. Not surprising.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 27.6 ms ] threadhttp://www.scripps.edu/news/press_releases/20120207keinan.ht...
That being said, am I missing something here? Information encryption and image encoding are two entirely separate things.
I'm not paying for the research paper, but the abstract states:
> Parallel computing with molecular finite-state automata and fluorescently labeled DNA molecules has been used to decipher two different images encrypted onto a single DNA chip (see picture). The images were deciphered by a mixture of input molecules that were processed by biomolecular automata, a strategy that potentially offers a huge diversity of encrypted images.
Again, this isn't encryption as I understand it in the traditional 3DES/AES/pgp sense. This is something closer to stenography or encoding/decoding.
Can anyone clear up what exactly is going on here for me?
>the jury is still out on applications
I disagree -- I see huge applications, especially in medicine. There were some people from Caltech that used a DNA-computer to kill cancer cells extremely effectively.
More papers are available here: http://cctbio.ece.umn.edu/wiki/index.php/Papers,_Theses,_and...
The compiler: http://cctbio.ece.umn.edu/chem-compiler/chem-compiler.pl
Cancer application: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~udi/papers/automoleculcomp...
This part made me laugh a little. The reporter knows what a Turing machine is, but doesn't know about the Church-Turing thesis. Not surprising.