I am curious on whether there are any applications of the directed Hamiltonian path problem to cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, etcetera. My reaosn for asking is that I've come across something in my field (molecular genetics) that can be used to solve such problems in a couple of weeks or so. -Allen

Secret sharing can be done by Hamiltonian paths. No public key code has been found to take advantage of those, or any other NP complete problem, so far as I know. DNA computing really doesn't solve the Hamiltonian graph problem, it just makes the biggest one that you can solve a little bit bigger. 500 point graphs remain insoluble (pun unitended) for earth-sized vats of DNA. Really. -- Thaddeus Beier email: thad@hammerhead.com Technology Development vox: 408) 286-3376 Hammerhead Productions fax: 408) 292-2244