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

It's destiny

[foidulus]

he was born to become the governor of California!

Re:It's destiny

[NimNar]

OK, where's his twin? You know, the Danny DeVito baby.

Cute baby!

[RLiegh]

Can you get him to give me my car back?

where are the pics?

[Richthofen80]

i expect it to be a sitcom-esque situation, where the baby lifts the family car when it gets stuck in the mud.

here's a picture of his asscrack!

[squarefish]

I'm not kidding!

Re:here's a picture of his asscrack!

[greenhide]

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

For those of you who are afraid to follow the link, in the photo the kid has very well defined leg muscles for a 6 day old baby.

I myself make, uh, plenty of myostatin. In fact, that's my superpower -- making tons of myostatin to keep my body almost superhumanly unmuscled.

Re:here's a picture of his asscrack!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the kids inherited one copy of that gene since they have a former NFL football player for an uncle.

They've got an incredibly understanding father if they inherited any genes from their "uncle" ;)

There must be a major downside...

[Anonymous Coward]

...as there seems to be little evolutionary pressure to supress myostatin in the normal population.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:There must be a major downside...

[confused one]

rtfa. They mentioned there's a concern he'll use up all the satellite cells in his muscles (the source of replacement cells when the muscle is damaged). They believe the myostatin works to suppress these cells; and, without it, his muscle repair / replacement mechanism is working overtime. He may end up a man of 30 or 40 with a muscle wasting disorder because he hasn't got the ability to repair damaged cells anymore.

of course, they don't really know. He may live to be 90, still be able to lift 2-3 times his weight, and show no ill effects.

Re:There must be a major downside...

[julesh]

According to the Medical College of Georgia, it weakens ligaments.

Somebody has to...

[NaugaHunter]

KHAAAAAN!!!!!

dear god

[insomnyuk]

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?

Mutants

[pete-classic]

Well, lets just hope Xavier gets to him first.

-Peter

*never* been found in humans?

[Kainaw]

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.

Re:*never* been found in humans?

[julesh]

Googling for 'myostatin mutation' finds this, which seems to be an account of another person who has this condition, so you're probably right.

Myostatin in cattle

[Lust]

Muscle doubling in cattle with the same gene was publishedin 1997, with extraordinary photos of a Belgian Blue bull: HERE

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.

my05t/\t1/\/

[bl8n8r]

I am adding this to my spam filter now.

Baby's Father..

[cOdEgUru]

From the article

There was no information on the baby's father

Second Coming of Christ! This time, he's kicking your ass!!

Re:No limit to muscles?

[00Sovereign]

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.

Re:makes you wonder...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Starvation.

Think about it. In the wild (i.e., in the hunter-gatherer mode of living that represents most of human existence to date) it's obviously useful to be strong -- but you also have to be lean enough to be fast on your feet, and be able to run long distances, and most important, not burn up too many calories just sitting there. Big huge people don't handle "lean times" (and no wild animal is ever too far away from potential starvation) nearly as well as little, wiry ones.

The pre-industrial agricultural period (roughly speaking, 8000 BC to 1800 AD -- again, a damn big chunk of time) probably exacerbated this with its frequent episodes of famine. These days, we regard it as an aberration when a few million people are starving to death somewhere; for most of recorded history, that has been a fear with which everyone had to live, all the time.

Dire wolves and sabretooth tigers died out. Grey wolves and mountain lions are still here.

Re:July Scientific American

[Tozog]

It is up for free now here.

The method in the article is gene therapy, replacing the natural gene with a gene to block myostatin. The NY Times article talks about a drug antibody to prevent myostatin from reaching muscle satalite cells.

PHOTO HERE

[swordboy]

Photo Here.

Mutations, founder's effect, and inbreeding

[orthogonal]

German supermen, nothing scary about that, eh, untermenschen?

From this MSNBC article:

Researchers would not disclose the German boys 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 [implying they also have one mutated copy of the gene], 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.

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.

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:makes you wonder...

[Moraelin]

I know it's a joke, but just for record sake, 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.

As was already mentioned by several other people, the food intake is one factor. I won't go into that again.

What I will go into is the situation humans evolved in. Humans didn't evolve as brave muscular cavemen wrestling sabertooth tigers in 1-on-1 combat. Au contraire. It was more like a stealth game, if you will.

It was a rather small and wimpy fruit eating ape, only suddenly there were less and less trees with fruit. It had to find a new source of food.

Now contrary to popular belief (e.g., among rabid vegetarian zealots) not all animals can eat grass and leaves. Raw grass and leaves contain an enzyme that prevents you from extracting the protein in it. Unless you have the _very_ specialized digestive system of a herbivore, _or_ can boil those plants (high temperature destroys that enzyme), you can't survive on leaves. That ape didn't fit either category. (We're still millions of years before taming the fire.)

There is, howver, one thing that any animal can digest, and provides all the aminoacids needed: meat. Yes. Sorry, vegans. The human species evolved on _meat_.

There was another problem, however: that ape couldn't hunt. It didn't have the speed to catch an antelope, nor the claws or teeth to kill it with.

It had to survive by basically stealing food killed by the carnivores. The problem not ending up as second course for those carnivores.

It was a game of stealth, speed and cunning, not one of brutal hand-to-hand combat. Evolving into something more muscular and slower was _not_ an option. A small ape twice as muscular still can't kill a tiger with its bare hands.

The correct evolutionary path was to become more agile and, most importantly, _smarter_. Being able to improvise a plan raised your survival chances a lot more. And conversely, having a supply of meat allowed you to have a bigger brain. This cycle is what put us on the evolutionary course to what we are today.

I.e., in a way, yes, the correct evolutionary course was to become a scrawny smart geek. That was the survival trait.

And you can see it in how the species evolved. In the original ape, the male was about twice as big as the female, much more muscular and had bigger teeth and jaws. It was originally supposed to be, yes, the muscular jock that can defend his woman.

What the species evolved into, was something where the two genders are a lot more comparably sized. Most of the muscle advantage disappeared, and the big jaws were lost too.

It's easy to extrapolate that the brave and muscular jocks were the first to get out of the gene pool. That was not a survival trait.

Cute maybe - but at 10 yrs old he'll turn green...

[M1rth]

I can just see his parents putting green makeup on him for Halloween some year after he sees The Hulk for the first time...

Who's Your Daddy?

[ackthpt]

The little boy dresses in animal skins, wears a turtle shell hat, carries a club, and can constantly be heard saying, "Bam! Bam! Bam bam bam!".

Barney and Betty's kid? How about a reality check. Consider the following from one of the articles:

The child's mother was strong - she had been a professional sprinter in the 100-meter dash - and she came from a strong family. Her grandfather, a construction worker, had unloaded curbstones by hand, hefting stones weighing at least 330 pounds. (There was no information on the baby's father.)

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!

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.

Myostatin blocker available

[dindi]

I am actually experimenting now on myself with a myostatin blocker. It is commercially available from
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 /day (good to rent an office with Gym use included ;) )

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& hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
myostatin:
http:/ /images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &q=myostatin+&btnG=Search

cheers :)