Mutation Creates SuperKid 747
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."
makes you wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Will be used in athletics for a limited time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will be used in athletics for a limited time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There must be a major downside... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Heart problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:here's a picture of his asscrack! (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There must be a major downside... (Score:5, Insightful)
Zero Gravity (Score:2, Insightful)
Spooky thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
And they were the rascists?...
Marvel Comics (Score:2, Insightful)
Will this guy be allowed to compete in the Olympics when he grows up?
Are we going to accept this guy or make him an outcast like the X-Men series predicts?
So many unrelated questions so little time.
Re:There must be a major downside... (Score:3, Insightful)
Adults would have an easier time of this if their arms were the length of a 4 year old's. I don't mean to belittle his strength, but this is an odd way to measure it since the length of the arm plays as much of a role as the weight involved. I would be more interested in what he can bench press compared to a normal 4 year old.
Re:Evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would that be an advantage? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Muscular Dystrophy (Score:2, Insightful)
The article says:
Hopefully this type of therapy proves useful in people with MD too.The article also says:
This would be a huge benefit to people who are bedridden because of long term illnesses. It could allow them to resume their normal lives quickly once their primary illnesses are resolved, without having to deal with the effects of muscle atrophy that set in after extended periods of inactivity.Poor Kid (Score:5, Insightful)
You doubt me. Call me back in 2050 and we'll see.
Re:There must be a major downside... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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")
==>Lazn
Having spent 18 years in belgium... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mutations, founder's effect, and inbreeding (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
To nitpick to death, it was an option. Just not a good one
Well, given the time intervals needed for evolution, and the environment, I still say that it wasn't an option at all. Small mutations in that direction happened all the time, and died, but actually _evolving_ in that direction for any signifficant interval was not realistically possible.
As you undobtedly know, evolution works in _very_ small steps. The mutations along the line are almost infinitesimal.
Such abrupt one-in-a-million mutations like this kid don't count, because the chance is pretty much zero that in a tribe of, say, 100 people he'd also find a similar wife, so they can transmit this abrupt mutation to their children. Or if they do, it's not too far.
Such big deviations randomly appear, and then die.
So to start evolving in a given direction, _tiny_ deviations in that direction have to offer a very immediate short-term advantage.
I.e., you can imagine that an 800 pound ape, pure muscle, and with razor sharp claws and tiger-like teeth, would have been _perfect_ for that environment. However, evolving into that was not an option. Why? Because it involves going through steps like a _slightly_ more musculare ape, and maybe with _slightly_ bigger fingernails.
Which step just lacks the survival advantage to continue along that line. It would need to go on like that for a couple million years, before it starts being an advantage. Before that it's actually a disadvantage, so it gets purged out of the gene pool.
The opposite direction, namely the ape with a _slightly_ bigger brain and other small deviations towards human had a much bigger advantage, so those were the ones who lived to have kids.
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:1, Insightful)
The only diet that will EVER work is eating less. That's all there is to it. Eat less food than you use and you will lose weight. No food company will ever tell you that and they lobby the government not to tell you that. Instead they promote low fat/ low carb diets. Why? They can make money off of these diets. Sell the same food for more money with different serving sizes and put a low carb/low fat label on it. Start a trend and rake in the free cash. See "Supersize Me" for more info. But yeah, stop fucking eating you fat fuck!
Re:Mutations, founder's effect, and inbreeding (Score:1, Insightful)
We should have a
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mutations, founder's effect, and inbreeding (Score:3, Insightful)
I had no mod points to give so I can respond under my own name, but I second the AC's reaction that this is one of those memorable posts that you wish you could give a bonus on top of some mod-points. If this is your own writing, please keep it up, it makes up for all the trolls and blabbering idiots out there.
Thanks. Again.
Re:Natural Selection, not evolution (Score:3, Insightful)