Technion researchers have developed molecular information coding systems

Among other things, the method enables the encryption and storage of information by stable liquid mixtures of organic molecules.

Technion researchers have developed a new approach to encoding textual and numerical information using chemical mixtures. Among other things, the method enables the encryption and storage of information by stable liquid mixtures of organic molecules. In contrast to the conventional use of electronic means, such as digital or analog methods, to represent the desired information, the new method is based on the identity and relative amount of each of the components of the mixture. The reading of the coded information is carried out by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This research was published in the leading journal ChemPhysChem.

The team of researchers at the Shulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, which included Prof. Ehud Kinan, PhD student Tamar Ratner and Dr. Ofer Riani, developed a new technique for encoding information chemically by mixing different compounds in a solution. The presence or absence of each of these compounds and their relative concentration encodes information according to a predetermined key. For example, with the help of 22 different materials, the researchers were able to "write" different texts and large 21-digit numbers. The research group demonstrated four different applications of the new strategy: 1) encoding, storage and encryption of a transcript in the English language; 2) coding and storage of binary numbers; 3) coding and storage of decimal numbers; 4) Algebraic operations with the coded numbers. These applications offer interesting opportunities for information storage, text encryption, and information processing, such as addition and subtraction operations, all in a molecular manner.

"The academic community, as well as the business community, are paying a lot of attention to the development of alternative calculation systems, based on molecules and intermolecular interactions, beyond the conventional information processing techniques, based on electronic signals," explains Prof. Keenan. "This trend stems from the widespread information that the ability to miniaturize in the computing industry is approaching the limit of what is possible. The field of information and molecular processing is gaining momentum because it holds potential in several ways, such as the breaking of miniaturization limits and the creation of new possibilities for parallel computation. Therefore, it is not surprising that the giants of the computer industry, such as Microsoft, IBM and Intel, show great interest in these technologies. This research constitutes another pillar in the efforts of our research group, aimed at the construction of molecular computing machines. Most of our attention is devoted to the development of computing strategies, based on biological molecules", Prof. Keenan notes. "The growing interest in biomolecular computing systems stems from their ability to have a direct interface with biological systems and even with living beings. For this purpose, no intermediary factor is required because all the components in molecular computing systems, including hardware, software, input and output, are biological molecules, the interactions between them can be programmed. For example - we recently developed a biological calculating machine, which consists entirely of DNA molecules and enzymes, whose calculation results are biological phenomena."