Abstract
Communication of sensitive data is becoming less safe. Common methods such as email often do not provide sufficient protection to prevent interception. By combining our expertise from engineering, computer science, and synthetic biology, we created “QRoningen”, a protocol based on a physical QR code with the purpose of secure information sharing. Our homemade bioprinter can print reproducible QR code shapes using an alginate bioink that is infused with a mix of different bacterial strains. In order to protect your data, we have engineered E. coli and the fast-growing organism V. natriegens. Tools from synthetic biology such as inducible promoters and kill switches are employed to reveal the QR code upon incubation in the proper environment. Only knowledge of the correct key, being the conditions of growth, will allow you to scan the QR code and receive the message, while exposure to the wrong cues will render it unreadable.
