[/caption]According to the article posted by Robert F. on Science Magazine, scientists made an unusual kind of secret messaging code by using bacteria that show glowing proteins when specific things are added into it. David Walt, a chemist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and his team worked on secret messaging that does not require electronics. Walt and his team combined different kinds of metal salts that gave a sequence of pulses of infrared light that encoded a message. Then, they decided to use bacteria instead of metal salts to code their secrets. They then combined seven colonies of Escherichia coli bacteria, injected with particular genes, which made different fluorescent proteins and showed colors such as yellow, green and red. This became possible when genes were expressed. By using seven bacteria with seven colors, they “…came up with 49 combinations, which they used to encode the 26 different letters and 23 alphanumeric symbols such as ‘@’ and ‘$’” (Robert F). The secret message was lined up in pairs of colored bacteria. Walt and his team used a method to “print” the message by pressing a sheet of nitrocellulose "paper" which immobilized the bacteria onto an agar plate (Robert F). A benefit to encode secret messages into bacteria is that only the receiver knows which color shows which character. Walt’s colleagues inserted genes for resistance to particular antibiotics and only those resistant bacteria would show the messages. The person who knows the right antibiotic would be able to see the secret code because the antibiotic will kill only nonresistant bacteria which would not be able to show color. To an unknowing person, it would be like a mix of colors which could not be understood. According to a Jan Sinnige report published on medGadget, Walt’s team was not the first team to hide secret messages in bacteria. Craig Venter, known for sequencing the first whole human genome, once embedded the names of three authors of their publication in a synthetic genome of Mycoplasma genitalium as a watermark. I was really surprised to read this new kind of invention code insertion into bacteria which can be helpful for military purposes and so on.
This is a very interesting post, as stated this could be helpful to the military for relaying messages. It really is amazing how useful genetics is. I am curious as to how long it would take to transmit a long and complex message. I was also wondering how much it would cost when compared to current methods of communication(i.e. equipment).
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