A Franco-Japanese team presented a world first in Tokyo, encrypting a message using DNA-based technology. A document was securely exchanged with the help of two identical keys created in Paris and Tokyo from synthetic DNA.
During Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Tokyo, French and Japanese researchers unveiled a world first in DNA technology at the LIMMS laboratory, part of the CNRS. A document was securely exchanged using two identical keys generated in Paris and Tokyo from synthetic DNA, one for encryption and the other for decryption.
As data storage becomes a challenge in the coming decades, the director of the laboratory, Nicolas Clément, stated, “The perfect hard drive already exists, it’s DNA.” He explained, “With a few grams of DNA, colossal amounts of data can be stored.”
President Macron commented, “It’s very impressive,” highlighting the potential for innovation and development. DNA cryptography could be an alternative to quantum approaches for securing sensitive information exchanges.
Researchers from EPSCI Paris – PSL, the University of Limoges, and IMT Atlantique in France, along with their peers from the University of Tokyo, used DNA properties to create encryption keys to code messages and make them incomprehensible to anyone without the decryption key.
A powerful encryption?
Military commands, diplomatic messages, financial data—the confidentiality of digital messages relies on codes, which face challenges from powerful computers capable of breaking them. For inviolability, an encryption key must be as long as the message being protected, perfectly random, and single-use.
The Franco-Japanese team created such keys from synthetic DNA, which lacks biological function and genetic information.
Since DNA is extremely dense and stable, the sender and receiver can share a huge number of these keys in advance and store them for decades or even centuries.
During communication, powerful sequencing machines at the sender and receiver read the DNA molecules and transform them into binary code (0s and 1s) to code, send, and decode a message of several hundred megabytes.
Scientists have developed techniques to ensure that any interception attempt is detected by the sender and receiver before use.
One key advantage of this technology is the ability to exchange encryption keys over long distances, unlike current quantum cryptography, which relies on the delicate properties of particles.
