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."

Comments

makes you wonder...

[MagicM]

If in most humans there is a process that actively limits muscle growth, then there must be a downside to being muscular... I wonder what it is.

Will be used in athletics for a limited time...

[SilentChris]

I like the fact that they're already touting this as an advance for athletics. That is, until people find out that (for example) it increases ALL muscles, including the heart, which'll then overgrow and collapses at the age of 35. There's a reason why mutations don't happen all the time.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[Timesprout]

Wouldn't everyone want to be big and muscular?

For myself no. I tone up pretty quickly when I work out but I would not like to get too bulky, it used to be a real pain getting pants to fit my waist and thighs properly when I was bigger.

That aside there are health and dietary implications. You heart has to work harder to supply blood, particularly under heavy exercise, you lose mobility, and endurance sports become a lot more difficult (not really a bad thing :-) ). I'm sort of half expecting to hear this kid keeled over from heart failure at 35 while putting the garbage out.

Re:here's a picture of his asscrack!

[kir]

It is an unfortunate photo (it's a pretty gross photo actually, surprised it was the only one they could get their hands on).

I'm curious. Why do you think it's a pretty gross photo? It's a baby's butt. That's about as "ungross" as you can get. Well... unless the kid is taking a dump. HE HE HE

When my daughter was a baby, her butt was the cutest thing... well... until odor starting hitching a ride with the payload. Damn solid foods.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[Waffle Iron]

That's the real reason. The human body is very energy constrained, mainly because that big brain burns energy at 20% of the basal metabolic rate. Giant muslces would need to provide a major guaranteed increase in food to be favored by evolution.

...Then this sounds like a perfect adaptation for an environment full of double-meat burgers, super-sized fries and 1/2-gallon sodas. This baby's genes seem to have a very bright future.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[swv3752]

The kid is no longer soft and cuddly. We have parental instincts hardwired to respond to soft and cuddly. (This is a bit of oversimplification). A kid built with the hard lines of an adult will not get the automatic benefit of a doubt that a regularly child will receive. If you have kids or been around kids, think of the ire they raise when they do something worng, whether crying as babies or making a mess, or breaking your PS2. Now think of how much madder you'd be if you viewed them as miniature adults instead of children. While having the extra muscle mass might be an advantagous, there is a severe downside in that as a species we would have been less likely to raise such mutants.

Spooky thought...

[Dr. Smeegee]

From Associated Press Article

Researchers would not disclose the German boy's identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand.

In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people.

I hate to sound the banjo alarm, but I suspect the easiest way for these genes to double up in the bairn would be in a case of incest.

Eep. Wonder if they are recessive?

Re:It's destiny

[BarryNorton]

Zee Germans may have a few tricks up zhere sleaves.

And they were the rascists?...

Poor Kid

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

He grows up to have damaged skelatal structure, heart problems and will probobly die before he's forty and all the while biotech companies have patented his DNA, reaped massive benifit and he hasen't seen a cent, let alone a euro.

You doubt me. Call me back in 2050 and we'll see.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[maxpublic]

You've got it wrong. It is an advantage, and it has no downside in a society where you can get regular access to a lot of food.

But for nearly the entire history of the human race, and for much of the world today, starvation has been common. Prior to the advent of agriculture humans starved about one out of every three years. Under those conditions, the demands of big muscles which apparently don't easily convert to food will get you killed.

For the kid in Germany who won't have a problem getting enough food to eat, this is one big bonus with no downside.

Max

Re:Mutations, founder's effect, and inbreeding

[orthogonal]

Errm I grew up in Africa and did not die of cancer by age 12.. nor did plenty of my friends. (there is a "white" population in Africa)

I'm going to guess that you weren't living like humans lived in Africa 40,000 -- or 120,000 -- years ago: unclothed except for skins (and many days would be too hot for wearing skins), spending most of the day under the hot sun gathering uncultivated fruits and vegetables or running down undomesticated game, without sunscreen or medical supplies beyond naturally occurring plants, with no doctors or even any understanding of why skin cancer occurs.

And quite possibly before natural mutations offering resistance to skin cancers had spread through the human population (by the death of those without those mutations).

And I spend enough time outdoors, that after moving back to the USA some of my friends had a hard time recognizing me when I lost my (very) dark tan. (yes I am now "pasty white boy")

And even with all the modern conveniences of (opaque but light enough to wear in the heat) clothing, sun-screen, and medical care, your body caught enough sunlight to provoke increased melanin production even in your white, European descended body.

I not trying to be overly critical of you here; it's normal for people to think that the conditions that they have personally experienced obtained universally and throughout all of human history. Part of the challenge of learning history or understanding evolution (human or otherwise) is to begin to grasp the enormous differences and the great epochs of time -- time far, far in excess of the span of any single human's life, time measure in the millions of years -- that separate us from our origins.

Let's play a game by pretending that every year only lasts a minute. It's 2004 today, so, by this game's metric, a "minute" ago it was 2003, and thirty-five minutes ago -- a little over half an hour ago -- Neil Armstrong, in 1969, set foot on the moon. In these terms, World War Two ended just a minute less than an hour ago. Three hours and forty-eight minutes ago -- in 1776 -- Thomas Jefferson declared independence for one nation while, essentially simultaneously in our terms, Adam Smith revealed an Invisible Hand that regulated commerce among all nations.

Each hour is comprised of sixty minutes, each day of twenty-four hours, for a total of 1440 minutes per day. So by our scheme, one "day" ago, 1440 minutes ago, an English King named Riothamus -- or Arthur -- had just recently failed to keep south-western England from plunging into barbarity in 564. Since Arthur's reign, the rest of "yesterday" saw the Dark Ages in Europe offset by the flowering of Islamic science and mathematics, the rebirth of Europe in the Renaissance, the exploration and colonization of most of the world by Europeans, and, an hour ago, the beginning of the atomic age. All this in one busy "day".

Even given the brevity of our metric, compressing one year of 525600 minutes into a single minute, it's still easily possible to recite the salient historical events on a year in the sixty seconds we are given, and even include our own particular history: "1903: first heavier-than-air flight; Grandma born." or "1943: Battle of Guadalcanal, Allied invasion of Italy, Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazis, Dad born."

But what's most interesting isn't those years, like 1943, crammed full of events, but the far greater number of years which our histories don't distinguish from one another. Two days ago, 48 hours ago, we come to the year 875 BC (since there's no year zero, 1 AD being preceded immediately by 1 BC). While I'm sure that a historian of that era could come with an interesting event of that year, the nearest I can come up with is the ascension of Osorkon II to the pharoah's throne in Egypt the next year in 874 BC. The remainder of day two will be pretty packed: Rome will be founded and will reign for most of the day, Christ will be born and crucified in a brief half-hour - but will give rise to over a "day"

Re:There must be a major downside...

[PantsWearer]

This is simply a case (an interesting case) of variation in the genome.

That's what evolution is based on. It's generally not substantial never-been-seen-before mutations. It's the accumulation of a number of these "interesting cases" that slowly, over generations, redirects the genome of a population.

These little mutations may cause this population to become non-breeding with other parallel populations due to a number of issues. With some species this may simply be the fact that one sub-population's breeding season no longer overlaps with another's (spring vs. fall), even though it's only a minor genome variation. It might be that some new mutation that plays well with other mutations accumulated with the population proves fatal when interacting with the original population's genes. It might also just be a social change; if one population is unattractive to the other, there's not much chance of cross breeding. (Like slashdotters and supermodels.)

In the end, no matter what the reason, separation of populations generally leads to further genetic drift. Not necessarily completely new species, especially if their environments are similar, but drift nonetheless.