Genetic Poetry

I read this story a couple of days ago, and for some reason it's stayed with me. Nature recently published a little article that this guy, Christian Boek, who wants to encode a poem in the DNA of a bacterium.

He's not sure which poem - I think that it has yet to be written, but he wants it to encode a functional protein. He says "Poets are always trying to write works that ‘come alive’ — but I’m trying to write a poem that literally is a living thing."

I sort of like this idea. It's sort of like a message in a bottle. He's writing something in the DNA of a bacterium and throwing it out to sea (although I guess this bacterium can never leave the lab) an maybe someday someone will read the message and think "hey, look, a poem protein. Cool." Or maybe they'll think something more profound.

Probably, though, no one will ever be able to read it. But there's something sort of intriguing about this poem copying itself over and over even if no one can appreciate it.