…he had set himself the task of memorizing every base pair in human DNA, having assigned a musical note to represent each of the four bases–adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. He would listen to the monotonous four-note sequences for hours.
“Sipaj, Isaac,” she’d asked when this jag started, “what are you doing?”
“Remembering,” he said…
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
Bewildered Creatures 