A 16-year-old French boy who made headlines around the world after he translated religious texts into DNA and injected it into himself has explained his process.
Adrien Locatelli translated the Book of Genesis and the 13th chapter of the Koran into a DNA sequence. He then built the proteins in a lab and injected them into his legs.
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Adrien told Newshub the process took him "some months" as he "injected [himself] with very small quantities".
"Nobody helped me, I did everything alone in my room," he said.
Adrien said he was not afraid because "injections of junk DNA and junk proteins are inoffensive. It is not dangerous".
Specialist in organic chemistry Dr Alex Hunt-Painter says "junk DNA" refers to parts of DNA that, as far as we know, isn't associated with transcribing or synthesising proteins.
"Essentially it's a really large proportion of DNA that's up for debate as for what purpose it serves in the body," Dr Hunt-Painter said.
When injected, Adrien says he experienced "minor inflammation like a mosquito bite". But other than that, he didn't experience any side effects.
"I thought that nothing would happen, and nothing happened."
Dr Hunt-Painter says that although Adrien did not think what he was doing was dangerous, this may not be the case.
"He was essentially rolling a dice. Whatever sequence of DNA he sequenced, essentially we just don't know what it was going to do."
"It's not like the body can't deal with random DNA, a good example is blood transfusions. But we're talking about an unknown sequence into a biological system.
Dr Hunt-Painter said to say the procedure was safe was "ignorant".
"He took a big risk, and he may not have necessarily understood the risk he took."
Adrien said he conducted his experiment "only for the symbol; the symbol of peace between religion and science."
He says that he will not be doing the experiment again as "I don't like to repeat myself. I did biohacking one time, and I do not consider myself a biohacker".
"It's finished, I will stop, and in addition it was expensive. My wallet would die."
Newshub.
