{"id":544,"date":"2010-02-21T02:13:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T02:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/?p=544"},"modified":"2010-02-22T03:21:13","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T03:21:13","slug":"where-can-i-get-that-gene-%e2%80%9cjuice%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/2010\/02\/21\/where-can-i-get-that-gene-%e2%80%9cjuice%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"Where can I get that gene \u201cjuice\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Abby Larson<\/em><\/p>\n

Athletes are competitive by nature, and many will do whatever they can to win.\u00a0 Steroid usage is heavily monitored in competitions, yet with the coming of the Winter Olympics, whispers of \u201cgene doping\u201d are becoming audible. There has been a craze by athletes for \u201cgene juice\u201d ever since a 2005 study performed by Dr. Ronald Evans, a geneticist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, produced the \u201cMarathon Mouse\u201d.\u00a0 Evans discovered a gene involved in muscle formation and altered it, producing a mouse that could run twice as far as normal mice.\u00a0 This spurred the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA<\/a>) to list gene doping as illegal.<\/p>\n

Evans was searching for a way to treat muscular dystrophy, characterized by muscle wasting and inability to build muscle.\u00a0 His study was based on the idea of gene therapy: treating a disease caused by a mutated or malfunctioning gene by inserting copies of the normal gene into cells.\u00a0 The cells essentially replace the non-functional gene with the normal one.\u00a0 So, if you can use gene therapy to treat mutated genes, why can\u2019t you use gene therapy to replace a \u201cnormal\u201d athletic gene with a \u201chigh performance\u201d athletic gene?<\/p>\n

A review article by Dr. Craig Sharp that will be published in March, 2010, titled \u201cThe Human Genome and Sport, Including Epigenetics, Gene Doping, and Athleticogenomics,\u201d discusses many athletic performance gene discoveries that may be possible targets for gene doping.\u00a0 \u00a0One example is a gene encoding myostatin, an inhibitor of muscle growth.\u00a0 Exercise tears muscles, which results in increased expression of actin and myosin.\u00a0 This increase in expression is eventually repressed by the protein myostatin, preventing excessive muscle growth.\u00a0 In 2004, a boy was born with a mutated form of myostatin that disrupted some of the protein\u2019s function.\u00a0 The boy had significantly hypertrophied muscles, and was still unusually muscular at age 4.\u00a0 Based on studies like this one, by injecting muscle cells with the mutated form of myostatin, Sharp believes that athletes and bodybuilders can create greater muscle mass than without the gene doping because inhibition of muscle production will be decreased following exercise.\u00a0 Who knew genetic studies could lead to Schwarzenegger-sized people?<\/p>\n

Death does not seem to scare overzealous coaches and athletes, who may bypass the risks of gene doping to achieve that extra edge.\u00a0 In several gene therapy studies, some patients developed cancers or severe autoimmune responses to the product of the injected genes.\u00a0 A 2008 report by Dr. E.B. Wheeldon showed that a patient went into an extreme immune response due to a reaction with a carrier virus used to transmit the gene of interest into his cells, causing death from organ failure.\u00a0 This does not seem to discourage some athletes and coaches.<\/p>\n

Have athletes started using gene doping to get ahead? \u00a0An experimental drug, Repoxygen, was developed to treat severe anemia due to a mutated gene. \u00a0As several Olympic coaches discovered, Repoxygen contained the gene for erythropoietin (EPO), which increases red blood cell production and performance.\u00a0 EPO itself is a currently banned substance by WADA for performance enhancement\u2014but how can one detect the gene for it?\u00a0 There are no current established methods for gene doping detection aside from muscle biopsy, says Sharp, which is a painful and unappealing method of detecting changes in tissue development. \u00a0A rising technique commonly used in cancer genomics may be the key: DNA microarray.\u00a0 A DNA microarray detects changes in gene expression in a person between two periods in time.\u00a0 In order for anti-doping agencies to use this method in top competitions such as the Olympics, an athlete\u2019s genetic file must be established as a reference.\u00a0 WADA has already developed a \u201cpassport\u201d program to keep blood and urine samples of athletes on file to use for future genomic comparisons.<\/p>\n

Gene doping raises an ethical issue that surpasses steroid use due to its difficulty in detection, although gene doping has been banned for over 5 years for major competitions.\u00a0 By the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, genetic testing could be a common procedure by anti-doping committees.\u00a0 It seems that as we learn more about the way the body responds to exercise and why the world\u2019s top athletes are so good, more daemons are unleashed from Pandora\u2019s box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Abby Larson Athletes are competitive by nature, and many will do whatever they can to win.\u00a0 Steroid usage is heavily monitored in competitions, yet with the coming of the Winter Olympics, whispers of \u201cgene doping\u201d are becoming audible. There has been a craze by athletes for \u201cgene juice\u201d ever since a 2005 study performed … Continue reading Where can I get that gene \u201cjuice\u201d?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[2118,2233,2080,2085],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-and-body","tag-exercise-science","tag-gene-doping","tag-gene-therapy","tag-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}