How to pass a serialized object to appengine java task?

I'm using java appengine and the task queue API to run async tasks. I would like to add a task to the task queue but pass a a java object as a parameter. I notic the task options api can add a parameter as a byte[] but I'm unsure how to use it.

1) How would I serialize my object to a byte[]? and 2) How would the task read the byte[] and reconstruct the original object?

Thanks.