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DNA Test To Determine Kids' Sports Futures
bs0d3 writes "Parents are being sold on the idea of buying DNA tests for their kids, to find out which sports they will be better at. The company called Atlas is based in Boulder, Colorado; and is selling DNA tests for $160. They are looking for what's called the ACTN-three gene, the gene behind what is called 'fast-twitch explosive muscles.' Children that don't have ACTN-three will be better suited for endurance sports like long distance running or swimming. Children that have a lot of it will be better suited for sports like football, rugby, wrestling, or hockey. Kids that have some ACTN-three will not be the fastest and not the slowest, they don't burn out the quickest and they don't last the longest. They are categorized as capable of playing just about any type of sport they like."
How will their performance be in Madden Games?
Great idea. I'm glad this service exists. You know what it's going to be really good for?
Lying. Saving your money but telling your kid you ran the test anyway, and what it said.
Breakfast served all day!
That'll be when the fun begins. Until then, it's just a mindfuck.
I predict a strong showing of reactionary "what's wrong with people today?" comments. I have to wonder if getting an ultrasound was originally greeted with as much crankiness as I often see from articles like this.
Myself, I'm a relentless progressive. So much so, I thought Gattaca looked kind of nifty.
Of course, sometimes I say that just see the horrified expressions on people's faces.
There's an even easier test. Look at your kid's birthday. Now look at the cutoff date between age brackets for each sport. Now pick the one where your kid will always be the oldest player on the field. More physical development = wins more = gets more practice AND likes the sport more = positive skill-building feedback loop.
This sounds really stupid and surely you end up best at the sport you enjoy and practice the most. I think this will just show which parent have the pushiness gene.
Well, if that isn't the start of Gattaca-esque trait selection, I don't know what is. Just don't let anyone select candidates for sports on the basis of the gene, okay? Give people with or without the gene a chance of doing what they like best, regardless of the statistics.
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Ugh. Anyone who knows anything about genetics has the understanding that we do not know nearly enough what genes or combinations of make anything a dead cert. Yes, they can be indicators, but it all should be taken with all the grains of salt in the Dead Sea. But I will applaud the fact that someone, yet again, is making money off idiots. Good luck to them.
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Well, given that selective female infanticide is driven by an underlying set of economic beliefs, with a surface coating of culturally localized misogyny, I suspect that the ability to prenatally identify computer geeks is rapidly drawing to the end of where it would be used to select against them. The cultural layer is taking longer to break down; but the economics of being a geek vs. being an athlete haven't exactly been tilting in the athlete's favor lately...
Incidentally, I always have to wonder how long it will take before countries with an enthusiasm for female infanticide will have it bite them in the ass and force a (likely very ugly) midcourse correction: Demanding dowries isn't going to work so well when there are 150 men per 100 women, and history suggests that young men with no real chance of getting married, or even getting laid, tend to take up unpleasant hobbies like crime and politics with considerable enthusiasm...
A more accurate method of determining one's optimal sport is to do a muscle biopsy. It takes an insignificant amount of muscle and compares the ratio of fast, intermediate, and slow twitch muscle fibers. I highly doubt that a single gene can be used to reliably predict that ratio.
OTOH, most people figure this out in childhood. Either you excel at sprinting, distance, or are mediocre at both. Plus, factors like body habitus play a greater effect than raw muscle composition, and practical experience is the only thing that factors everything in. But that's kinda irrelevant. Let the kid do what they like rather than push them into something they're most likely to win at. They'll probably wind-up picking their optimal sport anyway, and if their parents think the lost year or two of grade school training is a problem then there are some serious issues at hand.
The parents could just look at themselves... A *ton* of pro athletes have pro athlete dads/moms. There is a reason why a lot of brothers and sisters make it together to the top tier. It's in their DNA, and the family knows it.
And honestly, you want to look at the twitch muscle gene? How about height and build? You have to paint a picture that predicts accurately a child's build at 18. There is no one gene.
Some day DNA tests will be used used to black list people on to the preexisting list if we keep the old system in place. This is down side to tests like this.
Why does every single kid have to play sports now? It seems like every precious little snowflake HAS to be some wannabe sports superstar nowadays.
Sports is a giant clusterfuck of machismo brainless competition garbage. There are much better ways to keep your kid active without signing them up to some stupid team sport bullshit where you (and them) have to spend every free moment in practice or at a game or some other bullshit, time better spent on education and LEARNING.
But no, we don't want that. We want dumb kids to grow up playing or watching the sport-of-the-week and not having any real education so they're not smart enough to see how we, as a society, are pretty much fucked.
You know, golf and tennis are "white folk" sports also. It's unfortunate that the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods didn't know that -- they could have saved themselves from the agony of success.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Producing a top sportsperson is not the goal of raising a child.
They should be raised healthy, happy, and with good habits.
They have to be encouraged to do whatever form of sport/exercise they are willing/happy to do.
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Shameless (and copyvio) copy/paste from 23andMe:
This gene produces a protein called alpha-actinin-3 that is only turned on in fast-twitch muscle fibers (the kind used for power events like sprinting or weightlifting). The protein forms part of the contractile machinery in muscle cells, where it is thought to play both structural and signalling roles.
The T version of the SNP in this gene prevents the full protein from being made. People with two copies of the T version thus have a total lack of alpha-actinin-3 in their fast-twitch muscle fibers. Those with the CT genotype have one functional copy of the gene and can still make the protein.
Surprisingly, a complete lack of the alpha-actinin-3 protein doesn't seem to cause any type of disease. This is probably because another closely related protein can step in for alpha-actinin-3 in people without a functional copy. The substitute protein likely does not perform its job as well as alpha-actinin-3, resulting in worse performance in power exercises.
Despite lack of a disease outcome, researchers wondered if the absence of alpha-actinin-3 might have an effect on athletic performance. Studies of elite athletes in Australia and Finland showed that power athletes—those whose performance depends on fast-twitch muscle fibers—were much more likely to have at least one working copy of the gene than non-athletes. In one study of Olympic power athletes (i.e., the best of the best), all had at least one working copy. Similar results were found in a study of Spanish professional soccer players.
But does alpha-actinin-3 make a difference for non-athletes? In fact, it does.
One study looked at a group of Greek teenagers who had been tested for a variety of fitness measures related to power and endurance sports. In this group, ACTN3 genotype had no effect on the girls, but boys with the TT genotype were significantly slower in a 40 m sprint. Interestingly, running was the only power event that the different versions of ACTN3 seemed to affect. For activities like throwing a basketball or jumping into the air, performance was unaffected by genotype.
Another study looked at arm strength in a group of people before and after 12 weeks of strength training. ACTN3 genotype appeared to have no effect in men, but women with the TT genotype had lower strength at the beginning of the study. After the training program women with the TT genotype—those without a working copy of alpha-actinin-3—had made greater gains than the women with at least one functioning copy. This was true in both European and Asian women.
Scientists aren't really sure why having alpha-actinin-3 would improve power performance. One theory is that the protein prevents damage in fast-twitch muscle fibers. The group who conducted the study of Greek teenagers thinks this explains why only running and not other power activities were affected by a lack of alpha-actinin-3. Running involves repeated use of the muscles, while jumping only uses muscles once: damage is not an issue.
The scientists who saw that women with the TT genotype were able to build up more strength than other women also think alpha-actinin-3 protects muscle fibers from damage. Muscle damage is what stimulates muscles to adapt and become stronger. Those with the TT genotype lack the protection against damage that alpha-actinin-3 normally provides, thus allowing a greater gain in strength.
Alpha-actinin-3 may also affect athletic performance by virtue of its effects on oxygen usage in muscle. Two studies (one in mice and one in humans) have shown that fast-twtich muscle fibers that lack functional copies of ACTN3 use more oxygen than those with at least one working copy. This type of metabolism might slow them down. Mice studies have also shown that these altered fibers are weaker and smaller than fibers containing alpha-actinin-3, but they are more efficient an resistant to fatigue—a situation that is better suited to endurance sports than sprinting.
> So where's the "I really want to do it" gene?
Right on. That was the core message from "Gattica", that the will to do it can mean more than the theoretical ability to... as I saw all too many times in high school and university.
Until we plug into that, the ACTN-3 is going to be just the beginning of a long, painful road.
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Former East Bloc (i.e. communist eastern Europe) looked at the proportion of red/white muscles to see who would become explosive or athlete. This is an extension, but down to the family level... Even worse.
Thinking of the busy-body moms in today's China. Poor, poor kids. Jwish moms used to be seen as bad, overreacting psycho-freaks
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendy-sachs/chinese-moms-vs-jewish-mo_b_807569.html
but, the Chinese are worse.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
Soccer moms and Hockey dads, for what reason?
Calm down, all you mothers from Hell.
The universal reason for an abortion is an "unwanted child", why does the reason it is unwanted matter? Why do we question the motivations behind abortion, but not other forms of contraception?
There are a bazillion reasons why the parent doesn't want the kid, and most of them have nothing to do with health, they include such reasons as; "I don't want stretch marks", "I can't afford it", "I would need a bigger car", and "I can't afford a girl". Once you start requiring people to state a "legitimate" reason for not wanting the child, you turn some simple but controversial yes/no legislation into a minefield of legal "what if's". The end result being that even relatively stupid people will just pick a reason from the "legitimate" list and lie, thus burying any hard evidence of "gender bigotry" or "gender economics".
Besides, we have our own glass house of cultural absurdities, eg: google "circumcision deaths", now think that "serious complications" is probably 10X that number, we can't blame economics for that one so, "gender bigotry" it is!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This will become yet one more thing some parents use to put unrealistic expectations on their kids. Sure, physical traits determine one's aptitude for sport (DUH); but almost all of us will never play at a level that has any financial impact on our lives; let alone at that elite pro level. Even at the top pro level the competition is so tough that few make a viable career of it.
So now some parents will ratchet up their expectations and further push their kids towards an unrealistic goal. Instead of playing a sport because you enjoy it and reaping the benefits of that, they will be pushed into what they are good at.
Real ability is a lucky combination of physical gifts, mental gifts and hard work. Even within a family one person may have it and another will be at best a journeyman player. Even so, as other's have pointed out a better marker may be having parent and grandparent or two that were world class athletes. Even then, you may just be a regression towards the mean.
Of course, no one ever went broke betting on the stupidity of the American public or on the sports parent's willingness to shell out for any edge.
I truly feel sorry for the kids - sports should be fun and a way to socialize; not yet another thing you must compete at and win for your parent's sake.
Now, "GET OFF MY GRASS!!!"
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