Couch-Potato Gene Found In Mice

syousef writes "Good news for those of us who are prone to putting on weight sitting in front of a computer screen. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on research which shows that changing a single gene in mice turns them from couch potatos into super-athlete mice that don't get fat and are able to run for hours. They believe this has the potential to lead to a pill to turn similar genes on in humans. From the article: '"It is a pill that, in part, mimics exercise. It mimics the metabolic activity associated with exercise," said Ronald Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, who led the study. Writing in the journal Public Library of Science Biology, Dr Evans and colleagues said they tweaked the PPAR-delta gene to stay in a permanently "on" position and then genetically engineered mice with it. They expected to see changes in metabolism but were surprised at how extensive they were.'"

Comments

For how long...

[Drunken_Jackass]

I wonder what the new life expectancy of these super metabolizers is.

Re:For how long...

[cakefool]

unless it merely burns twice as efficiently...

is this the same as

[ashot]

this?

Fear

[oKtosiTe]

This all sounds very promising, but if it would be all good and all, why didn't a mutation in the past turn this gene on? There must be a downside, because it seems to me the organisms with this gene haven't evolved the way it looks now.

Re:Fear

[spacecowboy420]

We don't stop evolving, maybe it just hasn't been time yet. Maybe it wasn't neccessary for survival to be as pronounced.

I for one welcome our synthetically buff overlords.

Re:Fear

[nine-times]

...a being that's constantly spending energy would have to constantly restore its reserves of energy....Keep in mind I'm not a biologist or anything fancy like that.

Well, it's a good theory anyway. Scientists have speculated that our energy conservation and fat stores have evolved into us. Perhaps as we were travelling around (you know, spreading out all over the globe, you never know what you're in for) or perhaps through surviving periods of famine, we developed the tendancy to pack on the fat as a means to protection against starvation. Other proposed possibilities include that our higher level of body fat than other primates may have come from migration into colder climates or perhaps even from needing the ability to swim (higher body fat means greater insulation and buoyancy).

I don't know the current state of any of these theories (whether they're currently in vogue or not), but it seems to me that your overall point, that this may have been evolved into us because it was advantageous, is dead on. Evolution is not always towards what we would think is "better". Some scientists have even speculated that aging is caused by a mutation and that it was advantageous because it caused the population and gene pool to be "refreshed", so to speak. Some animals don't really age in a way that we can measure (or so I've read).

Re:Fear

[nine-times]

We don't stop evolving, maybe it just hasn't been time yet. Maybe it wasn't neccessary for survival to be as pronounced.

Well, with evolution, you kind of have to think of everything that exists as being "added in". What I mean is, this isn't a switch, always off, waiting for us to "evolve" to the point of switching it on. To think that way implies that we have some "superior human" in our genes, waiting around for "evolution" to flip some pre-existing switches. According to all theories of evolution that I'm aware of, no trait exists unless it is useful in some way, and evolution doesn't wait around for the right time to express a useful trait.

What we have here is a case of your body evolving a means of self-regulation, your body saying, "I'm not going to use all my energy, I'm going to save some and store it up in fat." It's not a failure to use energy, it's a positive act of conservation. The fact that this trait exists at all would mean that it is/was specifically useful in some way.

Now, there is an argument that homosapiens are so effective at surviving that our physical evolution has become stagnant, in which case we may need to take it upon ourselves to control our genetic expression somewhat. What I mean is, perhaps the reason for obesity is that we aren't properly evolved to sit in front of a computer screen all day. That there isn't strong natural selection killing off those who balloon up under our current lifestyle means that we probably won't evolve on our own to the life of abundant food and little exercise. Perhaps we can cause changes in ourselves which would help the situation.

That's one line of thought, anyway. Whatever we do, though, I'd advise a lot of good thought, taking different perspectives into account, and caution. Lots of caution.

dupe.

[numbski]

I couldn't find it, but I know I read this here last week. The article stated that by switching the gene they went from procrastinators to workaholics.

Unless they're different genes, in which case we could go from being procrastinating couch potatoes to workaholic super-athletes.

Yikes.

One thing here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to bust a move into this debate which is sometimes assumed and rarely taken.

Evolution is not "progress" it is adaptation. This is such a key concept that many of people miss. Things evolve back and forth according to their environment.

Humans, as a cognative creature, subvert this partially - in that physical evolution is trumped by cognative evolution. But even cognative evolution is trumped by social evolution. You can be much more stupid, but if your society (a meta-organism if you will) has better schools/educative practices you will pwn the smarter ones. Some of the debates about us pwning the neanderthals go into this - us using our social power to beat them.

But returning to the point, there are many scientists and activists who believe that there is some predetermined greatness we are heading towards and that genetic engineering allows us to press fast forward on so to speak. This tripe. We aren't "heading" anywhere, we are adapting to environments. So anyone who uses this technique to justify what they want to do to humans, is using a bs argument.

This makes people like advocate aborting disabled babies (like the philosopher singer) true monsters as they are saying that the natural randomness of evolution (which may or may not give the defect holder an advantage and take over the gene pool) is wrong and that there is a "true" course to our travels - which there simply is not.

Anyway, the "laziness" gene is there in some people for a reason, it's there because it is part of a process of adaptation. When we turn it off we are not "doing what is natural and taking away a "defect"" we are subverting people's natural states. This is dangerous to do without thinking about it. What happens when certain political ideologies become "defects" - anything to do with behaviour/mind and genetics over mere survival (I don't oppose fixing people with genetically busted livers etc.) is a dangerous propsition.

I am not opposing it outright, but it needs to be thought through carefully with a mind to what evolution really means (adaptation) rather than falling in with the cheerleaders of "progress" and starting to modify everything.

Anway, a word of caution - as it is our generation who will set the playing field for the future on this one. And jokes and such that take these issues lightly are ok, but being entirely conservative (in the sense that humour always pulls us back to, or away from, a "norm") ties us to the discourse of "progress" - which is simply not the reality of evolution. Anyone who says otherwise is making a loaded truth claim as to what "normal" is.