The reverse translation from English to DNA: how to encrypt messages in the genome

The year 2010 was significant for biology in the light of complete artificial synthesis of genome and its transplantation, which was realized in the Craig Venter institute, Rockville, Maryland. A research group, led by Nobel laureate H. O. Smith, J.C. Venter and C.A. Hutchison, transplanted a de novo synthesized chromosome of Mycoplasma mycoides into Mycoplasma capricolum. In order to verify the success of the experiment, the donor genome was edited by inserting the nucleotide sequence of four watermarks into different loci of the genome, antibiotic resistance gene and lacZ gene. Thus, the efficiency of transplantation could be evaluated using three approaches: 1. Control sequencing of the synthetic genome and identification of watermarks. 2. Testing viability of bacterial culture, treating their growth medium with antibiotics. 3. Turning the colony bright blue in the presence of an organic compound X-gal, metabolizing by a product of the lacZ gene. These three approaches confirmed success in transplantation, proclaiming that the first ever species was created by human. The linguistic interest of this great scientific breakthrough lies in watermarks, which were inserted into the donor genome. Each additional sequence encodes a message in English. In this light, the transplantation of de novo synthesized chromosome into the living cells became the first ever precedent where the human language has been translated to the language of nucleic acids. The aim of this study is to biologically and linguistically analyze the adaptation of the English alphabet to a genetic code, which is the first ever trial to encode a formally non-biologic information into a living cell, mapping the loci of watermarks and deciphering encoded data.