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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."
he was born to become the governor of California!
Can you get him to give me my car back?
i expect it to be a sitcom-esque situation, where the baby lifts the family car when it gets stuck in the mud.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
I'm not kidding!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
...as there seems to be little evolutionary pressure to supress myostatin in the normal population.
KHAAAAAN!!!!!
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Ok, two things about this story are amazing.
Firstly, that a 4 year old toddler can hold 3 kilo individual handheld weights, straight out.
Secondly, that 'many adults' can't hold that much weight. My leatherbound volume of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy has to weigh AT LEAST that much. What the hell is wrong with people?
Well, lets just hope Xavier gets to him first.
-Peter
Courtesy of Yahoo here.
Bush Lies On the Record.
I think it goes a bit far to claim that this mutation has NEVER been found in humans. Sure, there may not be any popular hospitals with records of this mutation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that this mutation happens about every 5-10 years in small areas all around the world.
For an example, there was a kid in my teeny little high school who had a muscular growth mutation. His muscles grew so much so fast that he had regular surgery to remove the excess lumps and knots of muscle. He didn't resemble a body builder. He looked like a mutation with lumps all over his body and scars where they had done surgery. I read this article and wondered if he has the same mutation.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
It's a good thing this kid wasn't born in Germany in the mid-to-late thirties.
What I want to know is:
A. How soon will myostatin inhibiting pills become available and:
B. How soon before jock dads start feeding them to their toddlers.
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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.
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.
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.
Does he turn green when he's having a tantrum?
I am adding this to my spam filter now.
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From the article
There was no information on the baby's father
Second Coming of Christ! This time, he's kicking your ass!!
Rapid Nirvana
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
maybe later we can have him fight this other kid, Richard Sandrak...
I dont think Richard is a genetic anomaly though... IIRC his parents are just martial arts and bodybuilding nuts.
Photo Here.
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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.
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As someone who has muscular dystrophy and has a mother who is severely disabled by the same disease, this makes me very hopeful. Although the article specifically warns that they don't know what the long term effects of this disease are I think you would find that most people suffering from muscular dystrophy would gladly take 30 years of a somewhat "normal" life compared to being doomed to watch my body waste away for lack of a viable treatment. That said, I'm still very skeptical of this discovery. There are over 40 types of muscular dystrophy, not to be confused with multiple schlerosis, which may be affected to varying degrees by myostatin. One thing that the article didn't mention was that even with myostatin it's not possible to regrow muscle with our current technology. So what is already lost may be permanently lost, yet even a 25% improvement or even arrested development of the disease would be welcomed by many of us in the MD community.
For anyone who's wondering about the uses of treatments for blocking myostatin, here is an article you might want to read.
Myostatin and Myostatin Inhibitors: The Next Big Supplement Scam
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!!
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I can just see his parents putting green makeup on him for Halloween some year after he sees The Hulk for the first time...
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
Let's all hope the doctors and scientists have good luck. They are trying to figure out how to save this child's life. If left the way he is, his heart will become too thick to stay functional.
This condition has been documented in animals, which have all died at a fairly young age.
This is just this child's misfortune to be the first documented human case.
Get a free ipod.
Barney and Betty's kid? How about a reality check. Consider the following from one of the articles:
They probably couldn't get ahold of the father because he was doing the laundry, taking out the trash or washing dishes, if he knows what's good for him!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
> evolution was not a beauty contest. ("Chicks dig muscular guys! I want to be muscular too!") It was about tuning an animal to be able to at least survive its environment
Hence the dazzling fan of the peacock, which the peacock uses to beat it's prey to death in a frightening, yet fashionable, display of evolutionary fitness.
There are many examples of evolution in weird directions for better sexual selection. For example song birds, fireflies, and Bill Clinton's exaggerated male chin.
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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.
May the Maths Be with you!
I am actually experimenting now on myself with a myostatin blocker. It is commercially available from
/day (good to rent an office with Gym use included ;) )
:>
....
& hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi/ /images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &q=myostatin+&btnG=Search
:)
Cytodyne Technologies (same company who sells Xenadrine an Ephedra based (lately in the US ephedra free fat burner))
Anyway, the product is called Myo-Blast CSP^3.
Anyone interested might consider Juiced Protein from Pinnacle (pretty OK taste compared to other protein shakes)
Why ? Why not. I am not a Gym freak, but I do st 45-60 minutes weight training +
40-60 minutes cardio
While I am against steroids I happily take an algae based product or bioengineered protein
as a little experiment - at the end probably they makes less harm than a bigmac
ahm + I am a vegetarian who does lotsa sports so extra protein is welcome
for those who might wonder: myostatin is responsible for skeletal muscle! Your tongue, and your heart muscle won't grow bigger than it is if you block that enzyme (I hope it really)
I recommed these searches "myostatin cow" : http://images.google.com/images?q=myostatin%20cow
myostatin:
http:
cheers
Of course, I had the same thought about the "miraculous virgin birth" when I learned about parthenogenesis.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Seven years ago, they create myostatin-free mice. Three years later, a child is born with the same "mutation". Also, there is no record of the father to verify parentage or that he contributed the other gene.
...
If I were a researcher who had solved the various difficulties (heart problems, etc.) with the process, and I wanted a secret human trial, I'd find a mother which already had one gene as a cover and make sure there was no information available on the father to give away the fact he did not contain the other gene, or falsify it if there were. Then, I'd act real surprised when the baby was born.
It could be legit, but the rarity of the mutation makes the whole thing sound suspicious to me
if i remember correctly it isn't a good thing to be working out (AKA body building) before roughly the age of 16 because it can damage the growth plates. If that happens the person is stuck as a short s**t for the rest of their lives.
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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.
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