Come on, admit it — we’ve all fantasized about having superhuman strength at one point or another. Having the sort of car-tossing, Mjolnir-swinging, evildoers cowering before your might sort of strength we’ve all seen in comic books may be out of the question, sure, but science is helping us learn more and more about how we get strong, and that understanding could help us get better at getting stronger. In their latest video, AsapSCIENCE explains what it takes to reach that goal, why some people naturally have greater muscle mass than others, and how new technologies could make super strength a reality in the future. You won’t even need to be bitten by a radioactive spider.
Scientifically speaking, the key to strength is a protein called myostatin that takes up a certain amount of space in a person’s DNA. Like pretty much everything else in DNA, myostatin levels vary from person to person. If you are born with more myostatin, getting stronger could be a chore — if you are born with less, you can expect to have an easier time packing on muscle mass. It follows, then, that by completely removing Myostatin from the body that one could drastically boost the amount of muscle a person could build, making them capable of getting ludicrously strong and muscular.
Now, removing something from DNA is a tricky proposition, but a simple method of doing 86ing myostatin could give anyone the ability to get as muscular as they like — though they’ll still have to hit the gym to do it.
(via AsapSCIENCE)
- After you test your strength, you should probably wash your hands
- Genes, also in your body, can’t be patented
- Superman’s beard gets a scientific analysis, too
