Dr. Christian Bok is a Canadian poet who decided to encode his verse of poetry into E.coli baterium. DNA is string of nucleotides, using cryptography the peom was embedded into the genetics of the bacterium. Cells use DNA as a template for constructing proteins. The sequence of nucleotides within a gene determine thesequence of amino acids and a triplet of nucleotides correspond to a command which amino acid to attach.
Using self taught molecular biology and computer programming,
a chemical alphabet is created where each letter represents specific sequence of three nucleotides. This process took four years to accomplish resulting in a novel gene entitled X-P13.
Dr Bok's research and goals have not reached a conclusion as he has decided to undertake the challenge of splicing X-P13 right into the genome of D. radiodurans bacterium. D. radiodurans is an extremophile, the world's strongest organism, resisting radiation, cold, acid and dehydration. With potential Dr. bok's biochemical text could continue to replicate for billions of years.
His motive is to create a message which will last many lifetimes over.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13001382
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