Use of Cryptographic Ideas to Interpret Biological Phenomena (and Vice Versa)

The RNA-Crypto System (shortly RCS) is a symmetric key algorithm to cipher data. This algorithm, as shown below, has the peculiarity to expand the message to be encrypted hiding the ciphered message itself within a set of garbage and control information. The idea for this new algorithm starts from the observation of nature. In particular from the observation of RNA behavior and some of its properties. In particular the RNA sequences has some sections called Introns. Introns, derived from the term "intragenic regions", are non-coding sections of precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) or other RNAs, that are removed (spliced out of the RNA) before the mature RNA is formed. Once the introns have been spliced out of a pre-mRNA, the resulting mRNA sequence is ready to be translated into a protein. The corresponding parts of a gene are known as introns as well. The nature and the role of Introns in the pre-mRNA is not clear and it is under ponderous researches by Biologists but, in our case, we will use the presence of Introns, in the RNA-Crypto System output, as a strong method to add only apparently chaotic and non coding information with an unnecessary behavior in the access to the secret key to code the messages. In the RNA-Crypto System algorithm the introns are sections of the ciphered message with non{coding information as well as in the precursor mRNA. But the term "non-coding" does not necessarily mean "junk data". In this text a new cryptographic algorithm is described starting from a mathematical point of view.