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Are the kids all right?
Because a teen in France decided to try injecting himself with religious texts.
Adrien Locatelli, a high school student, wanted to see what would happen if he transcoded religious texts into proteins and injected it into his body.
Locatelli, who lives in Grenoble, France, posted his research on the site Open Science Framework.
"Since it is possible to convert digital information into DNA, I wondered whether it would be possible to convert a religious text into DNA and to inject it in a living being."
However, the only one crazy enough to try Locatelli's experiment was himself.
A high school student in France has injected himself with sequences from the Torah + Quran, which had been converte… https://t.co/4j80W8otJB— Abstract Monkey (@Abstract Monkey) 1545138401.0
Man injects himself with Book of Genesis encoded as rAAV, and passage of Quran as peptide. Imagine the metaphorical… https://t.co/z9noQTOgUc— Steve Phelps (@Steve Phelps) 1545059138.0
It is truly a brave new world that we're living in https://t.co/6Gn670wy8W— Benjamin Isaacoff (@Benjamin Isaacoff) 1545059137.0
When you think you have seen everything... Student converts Bible and Koran text to DNA seq, translates it, makes a… https://t.co/lWSpK5tPb2— Kyriaki Neophytou (Caroline) (@Kyriaki Neophytou (Caroline)) 1544827583.0
OK, 2018 can't end soon enough. Some French high school student translated a part of the Bible and Koran into prote… https://t.co/ER0v0LkJSd— Sri Kosuri (@Sri Kosuri) 1544818274.0
@srikosuri You think things will be less genomically insane next year? Kind of doubt it— Michael Specter (@Michael Specter) 1544886840.0
@srikosuri there is no facepalm big enough for this... at least the title makes a pretty unambiguous claim...— Aaron (@Aaron) 1544818492.0
The young man downloaded a Hebrew copy of the בְּרֵאשִׁית or Bereishit which corresponds to the book of Genesis in the Christian Old Testament and an Arabic copy of surah Ar-Ra'd, a portion of the Quran. He assigned each letter in the passages a nucleotide.
He took that nucleotide sequence and translated it into a protein chain he could inject into his thighs.
Locatelli did have to cut down on the texts. For the Book of Genesis, he left out Chapter 2, verses 10 to 14, Chapter 5, and chapter 6, verses 1 to 5, due to their "controversial" nature.
It is very dangerous to attempt something like this.
The created protein would have unknown effects on the human body. However, this injection of macromolecules didn't cause lasting damage to Locatelli.
One thigh did have some slight inflammation for a few days, but otherwise, he's fine.
Though people are unimpressed.
Fitting meme for this "paper" (performance?) https://t.co/WCloy4Pt4C https://t.co/2YE8mBTn8Y— Marta Pérez Alcántara (@Marta Pérez Alcántara) 1544873326.0
Dear biohackers etc. Please stop. You are idiots. https://t.co/5AGqdoY8oF— Isaac Stoner (@Isaac Stoner) 1544830827.0
Funniest paper ever. Prime example of what NOT to do with science https://t.co/sFcxiXwDYO— andreas Hadjimitsis (@andreas Hadjimitsis) 1544910786.0
Some guy encoded portions of holy books into proteins and INJECTED THEM INTO HIS LEG? 1st thought: Even I know thi… https://t.co/gravwJ7qt4— Rich Abdill (@Rich Abdill) 1545143767.0
Boy, this is stupid. Could be in the neighborhood of the "CRISPR home kit" guy. To all the "biohackers" out there:… https://t.co/TTrKfgghtf— Dylan Rahe (@Dylan Rahe) 1545249306.0
As the discussion section of his scientific paper says:
"It is the first time that someone injects himself macromolecules developed from a text. It is very symbolic even if it does not have much interest."
Let's hope he chooses something less symbolic but with more interest for his next experiment.