Toward Smart Information Processing with Synthetic DNA Molecules

DNA, a biological macromolecule, is a naturally evolved information material. From the structural point of view, an individual DNA strand can be considered as a chain of data with its bases working as single units. For decades, due to the high biochemical stability, large information storage capacity, and high recognition specificity, DNA has been recognized as an attractive material for information processing. Especially, the chemical synthesis strategies and DNA sequencing techniques have been rapidly developed recently, further enabling encoding information with synthetic DNA molecules. Herein, recent progresses are summarized on information processing based on synthetic DNA molecules from three aspects including information storage, computation, and encryption, and proposed the challenges and future development directions.