The Hercules Gene
The Holy Grail for bodybuilders
Hi everyone!
I'm thrilled to dive into this community and share weekly facts and news about biology with you guys. As my first post, I wanted to explore something fascinating I recently discovered.
You know Eddie Hall, right? He’s this huge guy standing at 6’3ft and weighing a solid 360 pounds. You might know him from his jaw-dropping half-a-ton deadlift back in 2016. But does Eddie owe his incredible strength to grueling workouts alone, or is there something more, perhaps genetic, at play?
Now, picture Eddie Hall beside a Belgian Blue cow - two muscle titans next to each other. Believe it or not, they both manage to put on those crazy amounts of muscle similarly. They both share a loss-of-function mutation in the MSTN gene (the gene encoding myostatin).
Affectionately dubbed “The Hercules Gene”, myostatin is a protein found in animals that acts as a muscle growth regulator by inhibiting muscle development. But Eddie Hall and those beefy Belgian Blues boast a myostatin deficiency, granting them the power to pack on muscle like nobody's business.
While myostatin deficiency is a genetic rarity in humans, there are exceptional cases, like a remarkable boy born in Berlin in the early 2000s. It is said that this super baby could bust out an iron cross at a mere 18 months old while boasting double the muscle mass and half the body fat of kids his age by age five.
In theory, this pint-sized powerhouse might give Eddie Hall a run for his money. This is because the kid's homozygous for the mutation, meaning he's got both genetic copies in full muscle-building mode while Eddie is only heterozygous, having just one mutated gene copy.
Yet Myostin’s discovery doesn’t just shine a light on the unfair advantage Eddie has over his competition. Think of muscle-wasting conditions like Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Researchers are exploring inhibitors such as follistatin, which after binding to myostatin and halting its muscle-repressing antics could bring back regular muscle mass to patients. While it's been a hit with fishy subjects like trout, it's not quite ready for human prime time…
But would you try it?