Algorithm-Empowered Photocontrolled DNA Origami Nanostructures for Information Encryption

The rapid growth of data volume and computing technologies has exposed the limitations of traditional encryption in terms of physical protection, system flexibility, and key management. Confronted with increasingly sophisticated attack threats, the static defense paradigm based on a single-mechanism encryption has become inadequate for maintaining information security. Therefore, integrating multimechanism strategies for collaborative defense within a dynamic architecture is essential to enhance information security. Here, we develop an algorithm-empowered encryption strategy using photocontrolled DNA origami nanostructures, which deeply integrates algorithms with molecular-scale programmable structural reconfiguration to establish a bioalgorithmic collaborative security framework. Rectangular DNA origami nanostructures serve as encoding physical substrates, storing digits and alphabets through binary mapping for information steganography. Additionally, dynamic connectors constructed from azobenzene-modified DNA strands establish linkages between DNA origami nanostructures, with the interstructural states precisely regulated via ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) irradiation. Meanwhile, embedding the classical substitution-permutation ciphers into dynamically controllable nanostructures, combined with computationally driven key management, enables molecular-level information encryption and programmatic control. The cooperative encryption mechanism of substitution and permutation ciphers enhances information confusion and diffusion, while computational algorithms assist in optimizing the key layout and performing heuristic searches, further ensuring the security of molecular-level information processing. This work offers a promising perspective for research in information security and biointegrated intelligent systems.