Integrating Molecular Biology and Cryptography: A DNA and RNA-Based Framework for Secure Data Encryption.

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Cryptography
• Bio-inspired computing

Background:

• Digital communication growth necessitates advanced encryption against computational threats.
• Conventional cryptography faces vulnerabilities from high-performance computing and quantum technologies.
• Biological molecules like DNA and RNA offer unique properties for novel cryptographic mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a bio-inspired cryptographic framework integrating DNA encoding and RNA transformations.
• To enhance data security against emerging computational and quantum threats.
• To explore molecular cryptography for secure communication and data storage.

Main Methods:

• Digital data converted to binary and mapped to nucleotide sequences.
• Encryption involves DNA encoding, complementary base pairing, sequence permutation, and DNA-to-RNA conversion.
• Decryption reverses transformations to reconstruct original plaintext.

Main Results:

• The framework generates high entropy outputs and a large key space.
• Enhanced resistance to statistical and brute-force attacks demonstrated.
• Successful reconstruction of original plaintext achieved.

Conclusions:

• DNA and RNA-inspired systems significantly enhance encryption complexity.
• Molecular cryptography offers a promising interdisciplinary approach for future secure systems.
• The proposed framework shows potential for secure communication and biological data storage.