Xenotext parasite

D. radiodurans

“The Xenotext Experiment” is a literary exercise that explores the aes-thetic potential of genetics in the modern milieu—doing so in order to make literal the renowned aphorism of William S. Burroughs, who has declared that “the word is now a virus” (49). In this experiment, I pro-pose to address some of the sociological implications of biotechnology bymanufacturing a “xenotext”—a beautiful, anomalous poem, whose “alienwords” might subsist, like a harmless parasite, inside the cell of anotherlife-form."
http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_022_Bok_Xenotext.pdf

"The Xenotext consists of a single sonnet (called ‘Orpheus’), which, when translated into a gene and then integrated into a cell, causes the cell to ‘read’ this poem, interpreting it as an instruction for building a viable, benign protein – one whose sequence of amino acids encodes yet another sonnet (called ‘Eurydice’). The cell becomes not only an archive for storing a poem, but also a machine for writing a poem. The gene has, to date, worked properly in E. coli, but the intended symbiote is D. radiodurans (a germ able to survive, unchanged, in even the deadliest of environments)."

(The Xenotext, Book 1, Coach House Books, Toronto, 2015)
 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/the-xenotext-works