A single human gene boosted running endurance in mice by 100 percent. From Scientists Breed a Tougher Mouse:
‘Marathon mice,’ genetically engineered by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers, can run twice as far as their unaltered buddies. Previously, the only known way to increase endurance was through training.With no previous running experience, most mice can run about 900 meters before exhaustion. But the genetically altered mice can run 1800 meters (more than a mile) before running out of steam, and keep it up for two and a half hours — an hour longer than unaltered mice can run.
“Records are broken on a fraction of a percent,” said Ron Evans, the head researcher in the mouse experiment and a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at The Salk Institute. “A few percentage points is like a minute or two in a race. This was a big change: 100 percent.”
Humans have amazing endurance. Evidently this comes, in part, from their PPAR-delta gene:
To perform the genetic enhancement on the mice, researchers injected a human version of a protein called PPAR-delta attached to a short DNA sequence. The injection permanently incorporated enhanced PPAR-delta production into the mice’ genomes. The change is transgenic, meaning the mice will pass down the trait to future generations.The mice were also resistant to weight gain, even when fed a high-fat diet that caused obesity in other mice, according to research published online in the Aug. 24 issue of the Public Library of Science Biology.
You don’t have to be a transgenic mouse to take advantage of this though:
It’s too late for next week’s Olympic marathon competitors in Athens to take advantage, but, coincidentally, GlaxoSmithKline is developing an oral drug that activates the same protein in humans (called PPAR-delta) that was stimulated in the marathon mice.GlaxoSmithKline has completed the first phase of three human trials necessary for FDA approval to market the drug as a good cholesterol, or HDL, booster. (Increased HDL can help prevent heart attacks.) Evans said researchers at GlaxoSmithKline were surprised when told about the other benefits he and his colleagues had found were associated with increased levels of the protein.
Let’s see how long it takes to crush existing marathon records.