#jo zayner

[demi-shoggoth]

On Role Models

I'm a Biology teacher, and tonight is open house. Because I teach AP, so I get to do much higher level stuff than the usual freshman Bio class, I'm giving a lecture instead of the more freeform approach most teachers take. That lecture is titled "How I Hacked My DNA, and You Can Too". And I'm going to talk about how your body is a constant dialog between cells of different types, including a whole ecosystem living in your large intestines. Thinking about human life in terms of evolutionary theory can help us understand those interactions better. Homo sapiens humans are the last humans standing because they were the ones that moved into marginalized habitats and found new and creative ways to gather food. There's a reason why human cities attract "specialized generalists" like foxes, rats, crows and raccoons. It's because those animals are also good at living in the margins. And so your health, mood, and life will be better if you remember that you're an omnivore with lots of different systems that draw from your diet and your gut bacteria, so take care of them. Eat more fermented foods, eat a wider variety of foods, supplement them with small doses of targeted vitamins and minerals rather than chugging down a bottle of pills every week.

And I'm introducing this with the story of Josiah Zayner.

If you watched "Unnatural Selection" on Netflix, Zayner is a major figure. They are a biohacker, and were experimenting with using CRISPR to modify the genes of people in vivo. Specifically, by selling DIY CRISPR kits at cost, and injecting themselves with myostatin blocking genes in order to give themselves huge muscles. And I watched "Unnatural Selection" and thought, that's a supervillain origin story. That's if the Green Goblin was a hipster.

But Zayner also recognized that they were on a dark path. Once they realized that letting untrained people possibly do permanent damage to themselves was a bad idea, and when corporations started sniffing around on how to monetize it, Zayner took a step back. And understood that their attempt to go full super serum was because they were dissatisfied with their appearance.

This is Jo Zayner now. She/they, emphasis on the she, just like I am. And now they're working on projects to make transition and playing with gender expression safer and easier, like biochemical breast implants that degrade in 48 hours. And she's working on making vaccines that are safer and have less side effects and you don't have to go through a big corporation to get them.

Now, Jo Zayner is one of my heroes. And I'm going to share that story with a roomful of parents and students, and I wanted to share that with you.

[fourohfourlifenotfound]

Not if Jo Zayner has anything to say about it

You'll never be bioluminescent

Okay this one hurt.

[demi-shoggoth]

So I'm giving a talk for Open House this week. Which is unusual, because at Open House, it's usually about more casual conversations with parents and teachers. But I teach AP Bio, and I have lots of ideas. So after a fun, weird, witchy April 30th ( Walpurgisnacht), I wrote a fun weird witchy presentation for my AP Bio kids, and I'm going to review and revise it to show to their parents.

It's called " How I Hacked My DNA and You Can Too".

It starts with a conversation about biohacking and the Netflix documentary Unnatural Selection. In the first episode, a guy named Josiah Zayner is basically a prophet of CRISPR, a DNA editing technique that can work in living cells in a whole organism. But because he's unhappy with his appearance, he wants to mitate himself to be more muscular, a real life super serum.

They're trans now. Jo Zayner, she/they. And are doing much safer and more ethical work, like making biopolymers that act as temporary breast implants and improving open source vaccines.

I'll tal a little bit about how the organs and tissues in the human body are still made of individual cells, and that the body works through communication between cells. I'll talk about how Homo sapiens is the last human standing because we had diversified our diets. I'll talk about how the large intestine is more bacteria than human, an entire ecosystem, and how that ecosystem is in constant contact with the body through chemicals it releases.

And then I'm going to tell them little tiny ways to improve their functioning.

Eat more fermented foods to add bacteria to the gut. Even if they don't survive, they'll help teach the immune system what is and isn't a threat, so you'll get sick and stressed less. Dietary supplements like zinc and B12 can be used to institute more permanent changes, from building pathways between neurons to influencing which genes are turned on and off. Not, taking a huge multivitamin every day, but maybe taking a more tailored supplement once a week. And, because I'm trans, talking about how some foods will subtly influence hormones. The "soyboy" insult is a reflection of how little things, like linseed oil, will actually change your hormone levels.

And then I'll open the floor to questions, and I'll talk with whoever stuck around to the end. The door will be open, so people can come and go and see and do other things. Which is important, diversity and choices.

And I'll have a good time being a scientist, even though I dropped out of grad school