How to Extract and Grow Stem Cells in your Garage

Stem cells are funny. They are either a miracle cure for anything that ails you or you’re baby killer for working with them. But like, stem cells are just cool. Can we all just chill out a bit? Crack a cold beer and extract some from our belly fat so we can play with them?

Most of the cells we see and work with are cells that have been differentiated into a cell type. A skin cell. A bone cell. A plant cell. A muscle cell. Obviously, these cells didn't all start off this way. When they were an embryo they didn't have a fate yet or even as an adult many cells die and need to be replenished and so the new ones come from somewhere. That's where stem cells come in. In their most naive state pluripotent stem cells can turn into most every cell type in an adult human. These cells generally either come from embryos or need to be created using genetic modification. The type of stem cells most people are familiar with are mesenchymal stem cells. This is what people goto scammy clinics to get purified from their fat and then reinjected. These cells can only differentiate into a few cells types, bone, muscle, neuron and cartilage and you can’t be certain what they will differentiate into if injected in the body. One lady had bone form in her eye… But mesenchymal stem cells are cool because they are really easy to obtain as they can come from places like fat tissue. Why fat? Adipose tissue, as it is called scientifically, doesn't replicate. If you take some fat cells and put them in growth media you won't get more fat cells. This makes it easy to isolate stem cells from as they are the only ones in the culture that will grow.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking then? Why hasn't anyone DIY extracted their own stem cells by taking a little fat from their body? It sounds like so much fun. Maybe you weren't thinking that? But I hope you were. This is the way most of my projects start. Finding something interesting that can be done if people just put in a little time and effort to figure out how to do it. See most of these mesenchymal stem cells come from fat tissue extracted for liposuction or something similar and most protocols are for that. What if instead you just used a syringe and stuck it into your belly and pulled on the plunger? That's kind of a DIY liposuction right? This is generally when I get to the point of thinking that the idea is either too crazy or just the right amounts of crazy. And let's be honest I always try it. Once my brain has thought hard enough about something it's almost impossible to just not do it. So in typical fashion I talked to the other members of the Central Dogma Collective (CDC), David Ishee and Dariia Dantseva, about it. David wanted to use a scalpel to cut a big hole in his belly and pull out fat which was waaayyy crazier than my idea. Dariia, back in worn torn Ukraine, was all in if she could manage to find the materials needed which was no small feat over there right now. 

So I convinced David that we should use a syringe and not a scalpel and we went for it. 

I didn't imagine it would be so easy for being so hard. We decided we would stick a 16g needle into our belly and suck some fat up, soak it in collagenase to detach cells from each other and from the fat, and then put it in media that would help the stem cells grow. That does seem real easy. The hardest part of the whole thing was going to be getting the cells. That didn't bug me so much because I have a really high pain tolerance. I have enough piercings and tattoos, done enough drawing of my own blood and injecting myself with shit, that I am not unfamiliar with pain. I experience pain on a regular basis just on account of being me. It still hurts when I do these things but it doesn't Hurt. It's like, I've just learned to redirect that portion of my brain when experiencing pain. I've experienced pretty traumatic pain in my life. I once fractured both my ankles rock climbing by myself and needed to hike a mile back to my car. I definitely passed out for a second when I got there. That wasn't as painful though as when I had my vasectomy surgery. They literally did surgery on me without anesthetic. They didn’t inject enough. I almost puked, I almost fainted, I was clammy and pale but sweating profusely. Since then that's how I scale pain, nausea is borderline too much pain and then when I feel lightheaded and dizzy I've gone too far. Everything else is just meh. This is all to say I chose to extract my fat without any lidocaine anesthetic because I wanted to feel like I was invested, like I was sacrificing something for these cells. To me, for my art, there usually always needs to be sacrifice. Usually that sacrifice is time and effort but in this case it was pain and a literal piece of me. 

When the day of came I was pretty calm. I wore a pink shirt so any blood stains would blend in. I asked David if he wanted to go first but he declined on account of he wanted to learn from my mistakes. Seems logical but come on fam. There wasn’t much work up to it. I cleaned my skin with alcohol and then went for it. When the needle went through my skin there was a little pop and it shook David a little bit. Something I think he was not looking forward to. It didn’t really phase me. I've stuck myself with enough needles to know that I'm a slow stabber. I like it to be controlled and steady but that also usually means more pain. At least this time I get to put that pain on the alter of art. That wasn't the painful part though. Fishing around underneath the skin with the needle and trying to suck out fat hurt. I mean, it hurt 70 year old Johnny Cash style. Occasionally, I would snag some tissue and it would send a shooting pain through my abdomen that would send another drop of sweat down my back but I couldn’t stop. Not after I had gone that far. After about 10 minutes of that I could feel the nausea. Well probably after 5 minutes but I had to keep going till some fat tissue actually came out. I never imagined I would be so happy to see that yellowish gelatinous fatty glob. I just started laughing, kind of like that inappropriate hysterical laughing that can only happen after suffering through something only to see it succeed. I didn't puke which was good. David’s turn. 

He gladly used anesthetic after he saw what I went through. He also took far less time to acquire his fat. He was right. Next time I go second. Processing the samples was pretty simple. The fat actually separates pretty well when you mix it in liquid like any oil would. Shake it up a bit and centrifuge down anything that will centrifuge down and there ya’ go. We couldn't really be sure we had stem cells until we added chemicals to make them change into different cell types but that also worked out fairly well using standard recipes others had used. I now have Jo-neurons, Jo-bone and Jo-fat growing in the incubator along with my stem cells.

What's next? 

Trying to grow tissues and mini organs called organoids. Seeing just how much bone we can grow. And trying to see if stem cells alter the healing time of wounds. Imagine having an incubator of stem cells at home to use every time you get a cut.

When I do one of these experiments, these pieces of performance art, I hope it pushes us closer to that biopunk future I want to live in. Still not quite there though.

If you want a more detailed protocol of what went down check out the CDC website at http://the-cdc.com

If you want to watch videos of the experiment subscribe to my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/jozayner

Your BioArt is Dum

 Sorry I disappeared for a couple weeks. I participated in a Art show. Did a talk for SXSW and am on my way to New York for a corporate talk. My life is busy and when it's not I'm lazy. I would way rather drink a glass of bourbon and watch Survivor than write most evenings. I love writing but sometimes I have difficulty finding time to just be a human. Still I wanted to write about the Art show and my feelings around Art in general.

I still go back an forth on whether I consider myself an Artist but I guess I feel alot more like an Artist than I do a scientist. The "science" experiments I do more as a form of self-expression than anything else. I have a thing against defining myself and the work I do which might be more negative than positive. I think sometimes my iconoclasm and need to feel and be different is more of a curse. But, like, calling me an Artist isn't wrong. My "Art" has been in the SF MoMA, Philadelphia MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian among others. I did a performance with the Chromochord at NY MoMA PS1. I had multiple pieces on display at ZKM in Germany and collaborated with famed Artist Lynn Hershman Lesson. Everything on paper would seem to say that I'm an Artist. I still question it though.

A couple weeks ago I helped participate in and organize an Art show, titled Anomalous in Nature curated by Kessler. It was probably the first non-museum Art show my work has ever been featured in. (That sentence was so pretentious I had to write it). But I think this event made me feel more like an Artist than anything has. See, I didn't goto Art school. I never had to grind it out in Art shows and galleries and try to convince people to purchase or display my Art. I feel like I cheated a little bit. All the work other Artists have had to put in I didn't. I haven't had to commodify my Art to make a living. Maybe I have no right to call myself an Artist or challenge what people are doing but

BioArt is mostly shit

Including my own work

I say that because the genre of Art is so stuck in gluing petri dishes of growing organisms to the wall that the craft doesn't develop. It's very speculative which to me makes it lack that oomph that I want from Art. I want it to make me feel something or challenge my beliefs. Most of it just makes me yawn. Yet another Art piece of growing cells to represent climate change or racism or choose your socio-economic oppression adventure.

Maybe the problem is my viewpoint is deluded. I'm not an Artist. I didn't really get into making Art on purpose. I just wanted create something beautiful.

The first real Art piece I created in my adult career was the Chromochord. It's a musical instrument that plays notes based on the quantum mechanical state of a light activated plant protein. I built it from scratch, soldered all the wires, programmed it myself, engineered the proteins and “wrote” music for it. At the time I didn't think of it as an Art piece. I was just trying to bring to life an idea I had. The process of creating working prototypes of my crazy futuristic ideas is intoxicating. It is one of the main motivations of my life, to create things I thought were impossible at one point. To me that is beautiful. But I remember walking around New York with famed Bioartist Oron Catts where he told me that Art needs to have a message or meaning, "If you don't give it one other people will."(that's not a direct quote because it was 6 years ago or something). I've thought about that conversation alot since then. I go back and forth on it but I have come to the conclusion that it's not true. Art can just be beauty for beauty's sake.

Before this show every intricate detail of my Art was well thought out and handcrafted. I finally broke that pattern because this Art piece was so very provocative. Every time I talked to someone about it the conversation went long and philosophical and deep. The piece was titled i love you. It was my fibroblast cells growing in a dildo and a male masturbatory device(a fleshlight). Sounds dum I know.

The idea for this piece started a few months ago when I accidentally cut off my fingertip at work trying to cut cheese and just started culturing the cells from my fingertip. I'm normally not that clumsy but something just comes over me when there is an aged Gouda around. I began thinking about my connection to these cells and how they were "me" but they weren't "me". They contain my DNA and came from my body. They respond to the environment and are autonomous but they aren't conscious by any conventional definition. I feel guilty when I let them die or don't take care of them. I fed them my own blood serum. I have a relationship with this living thing that could be me. That's where it started to get weird. Why do I care more about these cells? How do I express this strange relationship with my not-self self?

For some reason the idea of permission really stuck with me and with physical reality sexual permission is one of the most visceral. What if I put my cells in a dildo and someone used it? What if someone made a cellularized vagina or orifice and had sex with my cellularized dildo? Is someone using these objects infidelity on either side? The feelings it brought up in me were pretty interesting and profound.

The dildo, the fleshlight, they weren't handcrafted. They were inexpensive sex toys I purchased and slightly modified for my use. This is a huge change from the Art I usually create where I try and pour my heart into the creation of the piece. I spend time learning new skills and months crafting the object. The challenge on i love you was me understanding myself and my own feelings. Don't get me wrong, culturing your own cells isn't exactly the easiest but my attachment to the piece wasn't in the crafts(wo)manship. It was how it made me feel. It's the first piece I have created that was meant to make people think and not just experience.

At the Art show it was weird having the piece on display. It did make me feel a bit naked. Some people asked me if they could touch it and I didn't know how to respond. I just kind of shrugged in an "I don't know. Sure?" kind of confusion. It was hard not to feel creeped on when people stared at it. I don't know how people took the piece. I didn't really try and talk to many people about it.

For me though the piece was defining. I consider myself more of an Artist now. My practice and understanding of Art, my own Art, is evolving. I don't want BioArt to be a thing. I want it to just be Art. I think we are still a ways away from that though because the practice is so diluted by people who either aren't skilled in Biology or aren't skilled in Art. Sometimes maybe even both.

You can walk into an Art gallery and look at a painting or sculpture and enjoy it for it's beauty. It doesn't need to be trying to communicate some moral truth about the world. I look forward to the day that BioArt can be the same way. Where a BioArt piece is beauty just for beauty's sake.

Hi, I am interested in buying your Sperm

 Being Josiah Zayner is 100% glitz and glam. Every McDonald’s I goto they give me free food. And I drink my coffee in the morning from Biohacked mammoth tusks covered in gold nanoparticles, because I already resurrected them. Suck it George Church. Nahh, the truth is that even mild fame tends have lots of downsides.

The good thing is majority of my life no one gets to see. Being an uber famous celebrity would suck. I enjoy having a private life. Unfortunately, the internet has made it so anyone can contact anyone and it's let's people invade your private life. I get lots of crazy messages and emails. And I need to sort through them to find the few that are from friends or people I recently met, &c. At first I thought these random emails were cute. I even responded to a few. But after a certain point of fame my inbox just became a dumping ground for dum shit. 

Let me digress a bit.  I imagine most people's inbox are a private space. You probably rarely or never get unsolicited emails that aren’t marketing. Mine is the opposite, almost all the emails and messages I receive are from randos. I see my email boxes as a public space because everyone else does. I get threatened, harassed, objectified. Numerous individuals have sent me over 20 emails. I’ve heard every story about a loved one or someone themself who needs help because they are dying.

I think it is unfair that people are constantly groping for access to me. And I’m not even that famous. Did I ask for fame? That’s a deep question that I will attempt to answer in an email one day but for now, I’ma use the emails people send as content to try and bring a bit of levity to the ‘sitch. Still, I will always attempt to protect the privacy of the people who send me these messages. Even though they may not deserve it.

So let’s begin. I hope this first message kind of sets the tone.

$300 is $300 right? But like, WTF! I can't even. My sperm isn't gonna save anyone's life. I promise. Did they really think this would convince me? The whole “I'm going to die or commit suicide if you don't do this” message is played out. People try it often. The end is the just, mwah, chef's kiss. A couple smiley faces and a "I can drive to you." I mean, isn't that basically sex work at that point? Which I'm not against but I cost more than $300.

Seems legit. Not. You didn't even sign your name! No one who knows alot about running businesses says "they know a lot about business". I get lots of emails from "investors". I can't figure out why? Maybe people think pretending they have money will give them the opportunity to get close to me? Maybe people think I'm that dum? I just never imagined part of my job running The ODIN would be trying to figure out if an investor was legit or not.

I imagine some of you out there who emailed me might actually be legit. Just know that out of the hundreds of "investor" emails I have received, zero have resulted in investment. At this point, if there is someone out there that actually wanted to invest in me and my company it is be way more difficult than it should be. I'm sorry for that. Srsly though, you can always just paypal me money, buy genetic engineering kits from The ODIN or purchase a subscription to my newsletter if you want to support me.

Who's saying I haven't already started a secret society of immortals?

THIS PERSON WANTS TO TURN THEMSELF INTO SPIDERMAN!!! THIS IS WHY I DO WHAT I DO!8+$!!$! 

Srsly though I would turn myself into Spiderman if I could. Hopefully soon.

This is one fucked me up. I still think about it. 

WTF? I never imagined just posting a picture of my feet — in shoes — would get responses like this. Objectification sucks. Even compliments don’t often feel good because it just makes me think about how much people care about the way I look. I would love to be able to post a picture on social media without being harassed but those days are long gone. It's sucks that the internet makes this kind of shit easier. STOP! Don't send me pictures of your dick or sexual messages.

I know I ended that on a sour note but I promise next mailbag email will have much more.

Until next time. And remember Biohackers, don't sell your sperm to strangers even if they tell you it will save their life.