Slanted Science

Great news for skinny guys! Scientists have used gene therapy to successfully increase the size and strength of lab monkeys’ muscles.

But calm down, stickboys: the intended use of this research is in treating degenerative muscular diseases. Better keep paying that gym subscription for a while longer yet.

This work was carried out at various research facilities in Columbus Ohio, under the leadership of Brian Kaspar. It is published in Science Translational Medicine, a journal which seems to be particularly fruitful this week.

The background to the boffins’ work is this: it was known that myostatin – a protein which is produced by the body and circulates in the bloodstream – inhibits muscle growth. This is the protein made famous when it was knocked out in mice, resulting in the super-muscled variety seen below, on the right:

So, these guys wondered if it would be possible to reduce the levels of myostatin in specific muscles by increasing the levels of an inhibitor.

That inhibitor’s name is follistatin, and the scientists used a viral delivery system to place its gene into the cells of their lab monkeys’ quadriceps muscles (that’s those big guys on the front of your thighs). The gene transfer was successful, the cells began producing follistatin protein and…

[it] induced pronounced and durable increases in muscle size and strength.

Quoted from the paper. The authors made sure that other organs in these monkeys remained normal.

And their conclusion? Let’s see what they have to say:

Our results, together with the findings in mice, suggest that therapy with [follistatin gene therapy] may improve muscle mass and function in patients with certain degenerative muscle disorders.

Here’s hoping.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But This May Lead To: well, hopefully to a safe and effective treatment for some muscle-wasting diseases. Sadly, we predict that its use in sports will not lag too far behind any legitimate medical use.

We’d like to recommend the Men’s Health book on gaining some quick bulk or tone. Here it is at Amazon.com:

Or, if you’d like to learn more about the anatomy of human musculature, we can sincerely recommend this book. It is genuinely a great reference for the sportsperson and student alike. Again, it’s at Amazon, so you’re dealing with their world-class services.