When most people think about injections they think about drugs. At least one French teenager, however, thinks about world peace.
Adrien Locatelli, a 16 year old high school student at Lycée les Eaux Claires in Grenoble, France, has become what may be the first person to have text-encoded DNA inserted into his body.
The first thing he did was translate passages into usable code. Which passages are reported by the Times of Israel:
He converted Hebrew passages from Genesis 1:1 to 11:9, excluding 2:10 to 2:14, 5, and 7:1 to 7:5 because they were “controversial,” the Daily Mail reported.
Locatelli also converted Arabic passages from Surah Ar-Ra’d, the 13th chapter of the Quran.
The method of translation was simple. Because there are four distinctive units that comprise DNA strands, Locatelli split up the Hebrew and Arabic languages and assigned each letter a strand, allowing for repetition.
As an example, were English used, A,E,I,M,Q,U,Y would be “unit 1”, B,F,J,N,R,V and Z would be “unit 2”, C,G,K,O,S,W would be “unit 3” and D,H,L,P,T, and X would be “unit 4”. “Why do this?” would thus be 341 – 43 – 4413.
Having gotten his coding written, he sent it off to the company ProteoGenix, which synthesizes custom strands of DNA, albeit usually for professional medical researchers. After receiving the DNA strands in powder form, he combined it in a saline solution with a liquid he’d purchased from the company VectorBuilder, which manufactures viruses which can infuse DNA strands onto living cells.
With the mixture in hand, he proceeded to inject himself with Biblical verses on one thigh, and Quran verses on the other thigh.
The result? He was immediately struck down by lightning. Nah, just kidding. He suffered a mild inflammation at the left thigh injection site which quickly went away. Adrien now has some extra DNA in his body, which show off religious verses if one knows how to read the code.
The obvious question, though, is “Why?” The web site LiveScience sought the answer, and Adrien told them.
“I did this experiment for the symbol of peace between religions and science.”
LiveScience
Put that way, it bears a level of nobility. That said, the decision still seems, well… a little rash.
Question of the night: Do you have a favorite religious verse?
