Superstrong Toddler

Superstrong Toddler

Today's fun with science story concerns a freakishly strong toddler who makes his home in Germany.

Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.

DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.

At least he wasn't born with blue skin and a pointed tail. That almost got Kurt Wagner killed.

But, instead of shunning, alienating and even fearing this monstrously strong child, scientists are looking at his genetic makeup, searching to see if the answer to muscular dystrophy and other degenerative disorders can be found there.

The boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff "mighty mice" by "turning off" the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.

"Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals," said the boy's physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. "We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy."

I like that the writer of the story refers to "the boy's mutant DNA segment."

I wonder how his folks like it, having this monstrously strong child walking around the house, pushing down trees and flipping over the family car. Honey! Junior's ripped the Berlin phone book in half, again.

I joke, but it's kind of cool.

It could be worse. He's not blowing the wall off his house with his sun-fueled optic blasts.

Yet.

Link comes from Warren Ellis at Die Puny Humans.