Overclocking Your Muscles, Overclocking Your Head

Dedicated overclockers like to run their CPUs and graphics engines at higher rates than the design speeds. This poses some risk to the hardware and usually requires special efforts to keep the machines from overheating.

NPR's Morning Edition had a supermouse story this morning about mice genetically engineered to be supermuscular. The most interesting aspect of the method is that it involves turning off a gene (now called myostatin) that limits muscle growth. It turns out that the defective gene is found naturally in a supermuscular breed of cattle as well as a certain German boy, none of which seem to be suffering grave consequences so far.

So why should mice, cattle, and people all have this gene which inhibits muscle growth? Wouldn't it be better to be muscled up a bit when you meet that nasty competitor or predator? I'm not sure that anyone knows the answer, but one plausible possibilty is that muscles just don't get the kind of mileage that fat does. Muscles consume energy and store it poorly. The rarity of the mutation argues that it must be subject to pretty heavy selective pressure, though, so quite likely there is more to the story.

Medical potential seems obvious. Perhaps administration of myostatin blockers could promote muscle growth in those with muscle wasting diseases, the elderly, and the obese. Body builders and atheletes will want it just for the fun of overclocking.

A lot of this kind of genetic manipulation is likely to become possible in the near future. Future parents may be able to elect to help their children to be a few inches taller (this is already being done in a modest way with HGH), or a bit stronger.

As the genetic component of intelligence comes into focus, this too will become a target of parents eager to overclock junior's CPU. More reasonably, it may make possible prevention of many types of mental retardation and other intellectual deficits.

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