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.
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.
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.
