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well, this is not news really. joe davis (MIT) suceeded doing this several years ago. he recoded E.COLI bacteria - taken off of space detritus. read more: Scientific American

dont wanna click: here is some nice info about him:
* Expelled from three high schools and two colleges: for writing about atheism, refusing a haircut, making a still (which exploded), being elected student body president on a "free marijuana" platform and working on an underground anti-war newspaper.

* Walked into the M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies uninvited in 1982. Secretary called the cops. Forty-five minutes later, Davis walked out with an appointment as a research fellow. (TRUE)

* Latest project is to build a biomechanical ornithopter powered by electrically stimulated frogs legs and to fly it across the Charles river. (it worked and he ate the frogs legs.)

* Uses hollow steel peg leg to open beer bottles, to accompany the band (bugle-style) at his local bar, and to charm curious women at parties. (TRUE, but he can do more...)

Joe Davis did this more than 17years ago.

I just hope that blasting pr0n radio at other star systems hasn't damaged future diplomatic relations with the ET's over there. Perhaps they will appreciate it as art or consider it as yet another example of interstellar spam.

--
Mars Needs Women

Joe Davis is an artist and research affiliate at MIT's Department of Biology. He and other MIT students and faculty assembled a similar system ca. 1999-2000.

Davis is an interesting guy who's gotten a fair amount of professional and media attention for his intriguing work in genetic and biological postmodern art.

There are no experts in art, only failed artists.

The only reason for projecting objectivity onto a subjective phenomenon is human insecurity. The Tipherian so caught up in the worship of his own flawed mind he takes death over reality. The mindless chauvinism of elevating artifacts of thought to the level of mathematics reveals the absurdity of the whole exercise.

Besides, you're not really and expert on something until you can explain it to roadkill.

Or to put it another way, we have to wait for AI to catch up. It'll get there. It's probably possible to code a machine to put together aesthetically pleasing tunes already. Sort of an audio version of AARON the painting robot.

I find it interesting when people talk about computers like that. It gets into the AI arena, but they always stop at say 2050 when computers have finally reached the capacity of the human brain. I find it more fascinating to ponder what happens after that, when they have surpassed us.