This work was inspired by a collaboration with Dr. Christian Bok, the luminary behind The Xenotext. The project aims to immortalize messages, in this case poetry, in extremophilic bacteria. The image here is one of the first microscopy images of our successful attempts to genomically engineer Deinococcus radiodurans to express this encoded message. Genomically engineering polygenomic organisms such as D. radiodurans is inherently challenging, but our lab has developed methods and tools to both insert and delete genes from this organism, a novel development which uniquely positions us to work towards bioproduction and other utilities in D. radiodurans. Contributors: Dr. Lydia Contreras, Antonio Cordova, Brandon Niese, Dr. Christian Bok, Dr. Vernita Gordon