Annual Report 2010–11

29 Biological Cryptography System Developed by Students CUHK not only motivates its academic staff to conduct quality research, but also encourages its students to engage themselves in research activities. A team of 11 students from the Biochemistry Programme of the School of Life Sciences developed a new encrypt-and-store information system for the plasmid DNA of Escherichia coli . Using bacteria as an information storage device was proposed about a decade ago. Building on the theory, the CUHK team proposed to fragment the information and store it in bacteria in order to store a massive amount of data. A novel information processing system was invented to reconstruct the original information. With this technology, it is estimated that one gram of bacteria can store data of up to 900,000 GB (gigabytes), which is equivalent to 450 hard drives, each with 2 TB (terabytes) of storage capacity. This innovative project won the gold award at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) 2010 competition organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Honours and Awards CUHK researchers’ achievements and contributions to academia and society have been widely recognized. Prof. Xia Keqing, chairman of the Physics Department, was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010 for his tremendous contributions to experimental knowledge and understanding of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection. An expert in the studies of fluid turbulence, Professor Xia discovered that thermal plumes are responsible for the initiation and sustentation of large-scale circulation (LSC), and that LSC is driven by the buoyancy of plumes. 他們特設的嶄新系統為各個小份排 序，以確保在存入資料的過程中， 訊息能保持完好無缺，繼而將各小 份輸入細菌的基因細胞裏。透過此 技術，一克細菌可儲存多達九十萬 GB (gigabytes) 數據，相等於四百 五十個現有最大容量 2 TB (terabytes) 的硬碟。 這項設計在美國麻省理工學院舉辦的 2010 年度國際基因機器設計大賽 (iGEM) 中獲得金獎。 榮譽與獎項 中大研究人員的研究成果和貢獻，屢 獲外界獎譽。年內物理系系主任夏克 青教授獲美國物理學會推選為會士， 以表揚他在瑞利—伯納德湍流對流 研究的傑出貢獻，以及對現今物理學 界的相關實驗知識和理論的深遠影 響。 夏教授是流體湍流領域的專家，他的 研究闡明了湍流熱對流中大尺度環流 的起源及其與熱羽流之間的關係，並 解釋驅動大尺度環流的動力學機制。 夏克青教授 Prof. Xia Keqing