" Digital DNA " to prevent cheating in exams

A firm has come up with a new system that uses molecules of plant DNA to validate a student’s identity and thus thwart testing fraud. According to Dr. James Hayward, president and CEO of Long Island-based Applied DNA Sciences, Inc., the “absolutely unbreakable” system features a counterfeit-proof identification card that combines the embedded DNA info with an authentic photograph of the student and forms a one-two identity verification that is impossible to forge or borrow.


Plants are a great choice because they have quite complex DNA, in some cases as complex or more complex than humans and they also have systems that enable them to endure stressors we don't normally expose humans to. Once implanted into the card, Hayward said that the “digital DNA” is then scanned using a smartphone and sent wirelessly to a secure database in a private cloud. It eliminates the potential for electronics to be counterfeited. In order to crack our DNA sequence, you’d have to know the sequence and that cannot be uncovered from the marker itself,” he said.

“We start with the whole genome of a plant and it doesn’t matter which one,” Fox News quoted Hayward as saying. 

That’s all students are when they take the SAT and ACT tests. Depending on the name, you won’t be able to tell if the student is supposed to be a boy or a girl, or even what they look like. This was one of the reasons that some students were able to pay others up to $3,600 to take the test for them.

“We’re capable of designing, in effect, an infinite number of markers, and we’re able to embed those markers and encrypt it into a variety of media,” he said.

Lawmakers are seeking to make cheating on the SAT and ACT exams impossible with a new system that would create unique, digital DNA code assigned to ID cards for each student. Researchers at Stony Brook University are currently working on this new system that will prevent cheating.

If you plan on taking college entrance tests in the future you may be subjected to a new “digital DNA” scan, one that researchers say can’t be beaten by fraud.

Source : Long Island-based Applied DNA Sciences