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Mutation Creates SuperKid
Tzarius writes "It's not exactly regular Slashdot fare, but the NYTimes has a story about a kid in Berlin (now 4 years old) who was born with naturally massive muscles. It's not a new condition, but it apparently hasn't been recorded in humans before. It also looks like the cause is a suppression of the myostatin protein, which could be reproducible." Reader Spazmasta adds "A gene that blocks production of a muscle-limiting protein (called myostatin) has been found in a abnormally muscular German baby. This news comes apparently 7 years after researchers at Johns Hopkins created 'mighty mice' through a related approach, turning off the gene that produces the muscle-limiting protein. I, for one, welcome our new myostatin-free overlords."
Courtesy of Yahoo here.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Muscle doubling in cattle with the same gene was publishedin 1997, with extraordinary photos of a Belgian Blue bull: HERE
Products that claim to regulate myostatin are already used by many athletes and bodybuilders.These guys are always ahead of the game.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
The cover story in the July Scientific American is about genetic enhancements of muscle. (They havent put the article online free yet.) The thrust is finding an inhibitor for the muscle-growth inhibitor called myostatin. In the article is a picture of a bovine lacking the myostatin gene. It is so bulked up, that it looks like a cylinder of meat with a nose and four hooves sticking out.
The downside is that your skeletal structure has to be strong enough to support the extra weight, your circulatory system and lungs need to be able to pump enough blood and supply enough oxygen to all that extra tissue and you need to ingest a hell of a lot more food to provide enough energy to grow and sustain your body mass, which in turn requires your digestive system can process the amount of food you'll need to eat.
Think of it as being obese, but with muscle instead of fat. Why would that be an advantage?
Agreed, as a graduate student in the biological sciences, I know that there may be numerous complications from this muscle growth. It depends on the exact function of myostatin, but some problems could be:
enlarged heart - much like someone suffering from chronic ostructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This causes the heart to work more and eventually fail
pseudo neuronal degeneration - failure of the nervous system to keep rewiring itself to accomodate the new muscles. This would lead to all sorts of failure in motor control, and eventual paralysis
These are just two that I can think of off of the top of my head. There may be other, unforeseen consequences. Of course, he could live a "normal" healthy life and get about 20 gold medals in weight lifting.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
Sounds a bit more like Von Recklinghausen's disease to me, rather than anything else.
If I promise to be a good boy can I have some better karma?
A few years ago I managed a retail health/nutrition shop. Shortly before I left there was lots of commotion over new research involving certain myostatin inhibitors. Once such product was made from a special marine algae. You can read a review about it here.
Unfortunately, I left the position before I had a chance to discuss with any first-hand users of these things, but it looks like they're still being sold at various web sites, so somebody must think they're working.
The boy is healthy now, but doctors worry he could eventually suffer heart or other health problems
they think he could very well use up his 'sattelite cells' (whatever those are) and his muscles would start to deflate at 30yrs...
Photo Here.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
If anyone bother to RTFA (but hey this is /. so that's too much to ask) it would tell you the hypothesized downside.
Muscle cells are surrounded by immature satellite cells that lie dormant until the muscle is injured. Then they migrate into the muscle, replacing injured or dead cells. A recent paper indicated that myostatin might normally function to keep satellite cells quiescent. Without myostatin, he said, the satellite cells might be so active building muscle that they become depleted early in life.
So they worry that the muscle growth will stop, and eventually reverse without the cells to repair.
Googling for 'myostatin mutation' finds this, which seems to be an account of another person who has this condition, so you're probably right.
According to the Medical College of Georgia, it weakens ligaments.
From this MSNBC article:
The boy has two copies. He could (absent an extremely unlikely second identical mutation on the other copy of the same gene) only get one from his mother. The other had to come from his father. The mutation is very rare. The mother has four male relatives with one copy of the mutation. The identity of the father has not been disclosed.
Anyone care to connect the dots?
I'm not pointing this out to be cruel or catty; I'm pointing it put because it's a good example of what's called the "founder's effect", a mechanism by which mutations -- by definition unique or nearly unique events -- became part of a general population.
Since this child has two copies of the mutation, not only are phenotypic effects greater -- he's even more muscular than his mother who has a single copy -- but all of his children will have at least a single copy, like his mother.
Were the conditions for founder's effect stronger -- that is, if he were a member of a smaller and more isolated population than modern Germany -- one can easily see how inbreeding could result in the mutation becoming common throughout that population.
When two persons with a single copy of the mutation breed, one-quarter of their offspring (on average) will have, like the child being studied, two copies of the mutated form (or allele) of the gene (and no copies of the gene's normal allele), one-quarter will have two copies of the normal allele, and one-half of the offspring will have, like the mother, one mutated allele and one "normal" allele.
But when a person with two copies breeds with a person with a single copy, one-half the offspring (on average) will have two copies of the mutation, and one-half will have one copy of it.
So if there's any preferential benefit to having the mutation -- if those with the mutation do better and so have more offspring -- and if there's the in-breeding of founder's effect, the mutation should become common in the founder population.
Indeed, it's likely that founder's effect, along with environmental conditions, explains why Germans and other Europeans, despite being descended from Africans 40,000 years ago, are white rather than black: being white is bad under the Africa sun, as, unprotected, it will lead to skin cancer and death by about age twelve. But being black in the weaker sunlight of Europe prevents the metabolization of vitamin D, leading to the weakened bones of rickets. In Africa, mutations that lead to less melanin production and whiteness also lead to death -- but in Europe it allowed a longer, better life.
But how did lessened melanin production and "whiteness" spread in Europe? Likely through founder's effect in small and isolated inbreeding populations -- but certainly not because of any "Aryan" superiority.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
(A) they already are. (B) they already are, I guess.
The problem is that they don't work. It seems that you need to perform gene therapy in order to effectively achieve this kind of result.
There's normally a reason for having a tight regulation of muscle growth in animals, as there's a reason for regulating cell divisions and changes that lead to growth and proliferation overall in all sorts of multicellular organisms (otherwise you'd be just a big blob of tumour).
So, taking out that regulatory protein myostatin will not perhaps be the healthies thing to do if you want to increase muscle size, as you'll just probably end up getting a heart-attack and all sorts of other nasty muscular problems with the most essential muscle tissues you have (heart and intestine at least). This sort of issues occur in GM-modified cattle with the similar myostatin mutation very regularly, and human as another not-too-distant mammal will probably not be any more safe from these problems.
I remember reading somewhere a reason why some topics in bad movies, like really giant insects, apes, humans, or to the other direction, very tiny humans (think in Giant's Land) [are unrealistic] and [it] was related to body architecture and strength of materials.
You're thinking of the cube-square law: surface area increases according to the square of the length, but volume increases according to the cube of the length. As mass correlates with volume, thus the thin legs of insects suffice to carry their weight, but elephants need thick stumpy legs.
But this has a number of biological consequences: not only would miniature elephants be (proportionally) super-strong and giant insects unable to support their own weight, but cells in the greater volume of larger animals require food and oxygen.
In an organism with a small volume to surface area ratio, all the cells are close enough to the organism's periphery to obtain their food and oxygen more or less directly from the environment. In "large" organisms, the internal cells must be supplied by the organism itself, so lungs and circulatory systems are needed.
(Indeed, the lungs -- and the intestines -- are designed to pack a lot of surface area, surfaces at which gases can be exchanged or nutrients absorbed, into a small volume, by means of foldings and branchings.)
In "medium-sized" (but still microscopic) organisms, primitive "lungs" -- as simple as a large hollow internal area lined with cells -- and "circulatory systems" -- such as an undifferentiated internal "soup" of nutrients -- can suffice.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Read the scientific american article. They've already figured out how to use it for athletics short of genetic engineering, and they've done proof of concept in rats.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I've never heard of Richard Sandrak before; here is an interesting link. I swear, some of those photos look fake. Jeez that kid is flexible!!
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/health/chi- 040624baby-photo,1,7431047.photo has a photo of the kid's legs. You might have to register. Hulk smash.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
A picture from a Danish newspaper. He is 7 months old at this picture.
Latest Issue of Scientific American has an article on gene doping which talks about this.
Actually, you are incorrect about the health implications.
- Muscle actually helps circulation by pushing veinous blood back towards the heart. The reason big powerlifters and Olympic lifters have problems is all the fat they have in addition to the muscle. Do leg presses and squats with light to medium weight for a few months and then walk up five flights of stairs. You will be considerably less winded than you would have been before you built those leg muscles.
- Endurance sports that don't involve long term steady activity are actually easier for muscular people. This kid may have as tough a time jogging 10 miles as someone the same weight and much fatter, but in football he'll probably catch his breath much more quickly between plays than anyone less fit.
- Bodybuilders who haven't ruined their flexibility with constant short range motions, joint damage from improper use of explosive motion exercises, and tendon damage from dangerous anabolic supplements can be extremely flexible. John Grimek, one of the greatest bodybuilders of the 20th century, could stand with his legs straight and rest his forearms on the ground. Casey Viator could touch his elbows together behind his head.
Sometinmes, it is though. Evolution is not about tuning and organism for the environment. It is about producing the largest number of offspring that go on to reproduce. Being finely tuned to the environment will help in this regard, but so will the ability to attract a mate. Witness, most of the avians (peacocks, any crested bird, etc).
Raw grass and leaves contain an enzyme that prevents you from extracting the protein in it.
It doesn't change the point, but as a technical issue it's that we lack an enzyme needed to extract sugar from cellulose (primary calorie source in vegetable matter). No animal has this enzyme. Herbivore animals like cattle, deer, termintes, etc have developed symbiotic relationships with bacteria to use the carbon in cellulose.
I.e., in a way, yes, the correct evolutionary course was to become a scrawny smart geek. That was the survival trait.
Add "that can run marathons" and you've got it precisely, according to some theories. Look at the hunter-gatherer cultures in Africa today. Our ancient predecessors probably hunted in a smiliar manner; wounding prey and tracking them until they dropped.
Evolving into something more muscular and slower was _not_ an option.
To nitpick to death, it was an option. Just not a good one :).
The big jaws in apes were not primarily for combat. They were for crushing nuts (Please don't take the obvious joke...). The strong upper body was from the ancestors aboreal nature. Once we became upright and savannah-dwelling, we didn't need massive upper body strength. We needed long bones in the legs, and powerful leg muscles. So jocks were selected for. At least, the track & field type.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
The reason small groups of humans were cut off from each other was a supervolcano that caused a nuclear winter effect for many years, killing off most humans and keeping the rest separate long enough for superficial traits to become geographically dominant. This article on the Toba supervolcano talks about this theory:
Oh, and Yellowstone is a supervolcano that is overdue in its pattern of going off every 600,000 years:Dude, Schwarzenegger's surgery was done to correct a congenital heart defect. In other words, it's a problem he was born with.
Weightlifting itself doesn't do anything bad to your heart. What damages your heart is overdosing on anabolic supplements, and taking advantage of your accelerated metabollism to eat all kinds of foods that clog your arteries.
"Almah" is used 10 tens in the Hebrew scriptures to denote a young unmarried woman. Young unmarried women in ancient Hebrew society would be assumed to be virgins.
Also, the Greek translation called the Septuagint where "parthenos" is used predates Christianity by over 200 years.
In other words. Yes, "bethulah" always means virgin, "almah" implies a virgin.
There is in fact a major disadvantage that you may not be aware of.
There is a finite number of times each cell in your body can replicate itself. Excessive muscle growth WILL limit the maximum lifespan of a life form, and it limits the lifespan of humans as well.
This is part of how limiting caloric intake increases lifespan, it literally reduces the overall cellular growth of a lifeform.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
but it'[s recognized that until puberty, most children look female in their body shape when other clues are not present
The "clues" in this case include what looks an awful lot like vulva where a scrotum should be.
Now, I'm not a parent, but...
I write in my journal
One of the reasons is stated in the article, where it may be possible that the child's cells will be too tired to properly sustain his muscles when he reaches 30. Moreover, i read once about this issue envolving the 'garbage' inside the DNA, called introns. They accumulate on the chormosomes arms and are spliced each time it duplicates. Up to here there is no real problem, but think about the times this kid's cells will multiplicate by the time he reaches 10. When the telomerase starts fading away, the part of the chromosome that is chopped are introns, and that can be a real issue if you start thinking about cancer being 12. In the other hand, IMO evolution doesn't make mistakes, so this might just be one of it's first experiments to improve one of it's youngest species, and most (that is genetically) underdeveloped.
THE EVERLASTING MAN
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G.K. Chesterton
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
PREFATORY NOTE
This book needs a preliminary note that its scope be not misunderstood The view suggested is historical rather than theological, and does not deal directly with a religious change which has been the chief event of my own life; and about which I am already writing a more purely controversial volume. It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject, above all this subject, without showing that he is a Catholic; but this study is not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant. Much of it is devoted to many sorts of Pagans rather than any sort of Christians; and its thesis is that those who say that Christ stands side by side with similar myths, and his religion side by side with similar religions, are only repeating a very stale formula contradicted by a very striking fact. To suggest this I have not needed to go much beyond matters known to us all; I make no claim to learning; and have to depend for some things, as has rather become the fashion, on those who are more learned. As I have more than once differed from Mr. H. G. Wells in his view of history, it is the more right that I should here congratulate him on the courage and constructive imagination which carried through his vast and varied and intensely interesting work; but still more on having asserted the reasonable right of the amateur to do what he can with the facts which the specialists provide.
* * *
INTRODUCTION
THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK
There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place; and I tried to trace such a journey in a story I once wrote. It is, however, a relief to turn from that topic to another story that I never wrote. Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. It is only too probable that I shall never write it, so I will use it symbolically here; for it was a symbol of the same truth. I conceived it as a romance of those vast valleys with sloping sides, like those along which the ancient White Horses of Wessex are scrawled along the flanks of the hills. It concerned some boy whose farm or cottage stood on such a slope, and who went on his travels to find something, such as the effigy and grave of some giant; and when he was far enough from home he looked back and saw that his own farm and kitchen-garden, shining flat on the hill-side like the colours and quarterings of a shield, were but parts of some such gigantic figure, on which he had always lived, but which was too large and too close to be seen. That, I think, is a true picture of the progress of any really independent intelligence today; and that is the point of this book . .
[ . . . ]
* * *
PART I. ON THE CREATURE CALLED MAN
* * *
I. THE MAN IN THE CAVE
Far away in some strange constellation in skies infinitely remote, there is a small star, which astronomers may some day discover. At least I could never observe in the faces or demeanour of most astronomers or men of science any evidence that they have discovered it; though as a matter of fact they were walking about on it all the time. It is a star that brings forth out of itself very strange plants and very strange animals; and none stranger than the men of science. That at least is the way in which I should begin a history of the world, if I had to follow the scientific custom of beginning with an account of the astronomical universe. I should try to see even this earth from the outside, not by the hackneyed insistence of its relative position to the sun, but by some imaginative effort to conceive its remote position for the dehumanised spectator. Only I do not believe in being dehumanised in order to study humanity. I do not believe in dwelling upon the distances that are supposed to dwarf the world; I think there is even someth
IC XC NIKA
As your Subject: line says, evolution IS a beauty contest -- at least, in large part. Vast numbers of the traits of organisms are a direct result of sexual competition, or of sexual competition in combination with some other, more necessary, survival trait.
You don't think female humans have breasts that large because mammary glands take up a lot of space, do you? Even the flattest-chested woman can breastfeed her children handily. The breasts of apes are all pancake-like, yet they work perfectly well. No, large human breasts are mostly fat -- and they're that way because human men like them that way.
As for why men like them that way in the first place, check out some of Desmond Morris's work sometime.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This is stuff out out of a sophmore year biology class. The limiting factor is a part of the DNA strand known as a telomere.
it is generally theorized that the purpose of limiting cellular replication is it limits cancer, ie a single mutated cell shouldn't replicate forever.
Here are several medical journal articles you can look up on The National Library of Medicine regarding limiting caloric intake, and several microcellular observations regarding the DNA replication process.
Miller RA, Extending life: scientific prospects and political obstacles. Milbank Q 2002 ;80(1)
Sreekumar R, et al, Effects of caloric restriction on mitochondrial function and gene transcripts in rat muscle. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2002 Jul ; 283 (1) / E38-43
Jolly CA, et al, Life span is prolonged in food-restricted autoimmune-prone (NZB x NZW)F(1) mice fed a diet enriched with (n-3) fatty acids. J Nutr 2001 Oct;131(10):2753-60.
Hansen BC, et al, Calorie restriction in nonhuman primates: mechanisms of reduced morbidity and mortality. Toxicol Sci 1999 Dec / 52 (2 Suppl) / 56-60.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Using parthenogenesis to attempt to "explain away" the virgin birth is just stupid. I quote one of the sites returned in your google search link:
It's impossible, even in the absurd event of unstimulated parthenogenesis, for a male to be born this way. Sorry to just blow a big huge hole in your weak arguement, but if you make arguements as dumb as this you should expect it to happen.