The technique relies on introducing genetic “barcodes” to DNA samples as they are collected and securely sending information crucial to identifying these barcodes to technicians in the laboratory. The system shows one way to guarantee that a sample taken in the field, transported to a lab and processed for genetic identification is genuine.
The results appear online on May 14 in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
“If you think about conventional encryption techniques, like security for a smartphone, there’s usually a passcode that only one person knows,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a system-on-chip design engineer at Intel Corporation and recent Duke electrical and computer engineering PhD graduate.
