Past project notes

Berkeley 2005: Cryptography through conjugation

In 2005, Berkeley attempted to build on Farren's work on ribostructures by using their specificity as a "lock and key" structure. From my knowledge it is a bit like a bio-RSA system (though they didn't specify this so I'm not positive I'm intrep. it correctly...). In general, they use conjugation in F and RP4 plasmid containing bacteria to move a "locked item" from one cell to another, which can then be unlocked by a "key" - this allows the transcription of a protein which causes backwards conjugation, whereupon the same process occurs backwards. Reporters (YFP, GFP, RFP) are used to determine success.

In the RSA encryption system, each person has their own key which others can use to encrypt messages. For example, if there is a person A to send a message to