Applying CRISPR-Cas9 Off-Target Editing on DNA based Steganography

Hong Zhou,Xiaoli Huan

doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2019.0100801

Abstract

Different from cryptography which encodes data into an incomprehensible format difficult to decrypt, steganography hides the trace of data and therefore minimizes attention to the hidden data. To hide data, a carrier body must be utilized. In addition to the traditional data carriers including images, audios, and videos, DNA emerges as another promising data carrier due to its high capacity and complexity. Currently, DNA based steganography can be practiced with either biological DNA substances or digital DNA sequences. In this article, we present a digital DNA steganography approach that utilizes the CRISPR-Cas9 off-target editing such that the secret message is fragmented into multiple sgRNA homologous sequences in the genome. Retrieval of the hidden message mimics the Cas9 off-target detection process which can be accelerated by computer software. The feasibility of this approach is analyzed, and practical concerns are discussed.

Highlights

Steganography is a technology that integrates the secret data into a common message seamlessly to avoid any attention to the data
Steganography hides the message in a data carrier and makes minimal modifications to the carrier so that most people won't imagine any secret messages inside
One approach introduces frame-shift insertions and/or deletions inside a targeted gene to generate gene-specific knock-outs. The success of this application depends on the error-prone nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway that repairs the double strand DNA break introduced by the Cas9 nuclease

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Steganography is a technology that integrates the secret data into a common message seamlessly to avoid any attention to the data (note that data and message are two exchangeable concepts in this article). Steganography hides the message in a data carrier and makes minimal modifications to the carrier so that most people won't imagine any secret messages inside. Human genome is about three billion base pairs which can store a large amount of information, making it a powerful data carrier in DNA based steganography

RELATED WORK

PROPOSED ALGORITHM

All other substitutions 00

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Method type Traditional Our method

CONCLUSION