I’ve read how Chimpanzees are 4 times as strong humans, and that they literally rip a grown adult to pieces. Apparently we humans have a mutation in our genes which took away this super strength, trading it for endurance and turning us into nature’s pansies.
I would like to use the CRSPER gene editing tool to undo this mutation so that I, personally can have Super simian strength and have the ability to rip the arms off my enemies and beat them to do death with their own limbs. I want this because… who wouldn’t.
So my question is can I actually do this? I don’t mind being unethical or violating any laws. I’m not afraid of tampering with Mother Nature, stepping into God’s domain, or becoming an unholy abomination. I just need to know if I can do it and how?
Secondly, assuming I can do it, what sort of unintended consequences can I expect and how can I avoid them. I’m a little worried that a million years of evolution without super strength might have left my body a little flimsy and under equipped to handle this strength. Would I rip my arms off, snap tendons or crack bones trying to use my full strength.
Fast answers would be appreciated as I’d like to complete my project and enter 2018 as the Strongest man ever.
However, I do know that part of a chimp’s strength is from the genetic mutation we have in our muscles (as you note), but also part of it comes from the fact that their tendons attach to the bones further down, which gives them more leverage. So tinkering with your muscular genetics alone won’t let you win an arm wrestling match against a chimp.
I also know that the gene in question is nicknamed the “Mighty Mouse” gene, which I always thought was kinda cute. You don’t necessarily need to do any genetic manipulation to end up with this particular genetic defect. Every once in a while a normal human just happens to end up with the right copies of each gene involved (I think you have to get both copies of the gene, one from your mother and one from your father, to get super-muscles).
I remember reading about a German boy who had the Mighty Mouse gene combination several years ago. Poking around on google, it seems that there’s not much info available about this kid since his parents are trying to keep everything private. I also found that there’s a kid named Liam Hoekstra who has basically the same condition, though I think the genetics involved are slightly different.
The NIH has an article about this condition, which is referred to as myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy. I expected there to be some detrimental side-effects from this condition, but the NIH says no:
In any event, you can’t just magically alter your genes and POOF suddenly have super-human strength. The genes affect how much muscle vs. fat develops, so people with this condition can pig out on potato chips all day long and not get fat. But you would still have to develop muscle mass over time and would still have to exercise to properly develop those muscles. Even if you could somehow replace all of the genes in the muscles throughout your body, that wouldn’t instantly give you super-human strength.
I have my heart set on this. A simple “no” would leave me unsatisfied. I need to know why I can’t and what exactly stands in my way. Maybe you say “no” but I can get around whatever your objection is by being unethical or committing crimes against nature, or by harvesting the blood of 10,000 newborns.
That is very cool, and if worse comes to worse I’d settle for that, but I don’t think that’s the gene we are looking for. I googled it, and the mice and even a picture of a dog with that gene all appear musclebound.
Chimps on the other hand look like scrawny old men with pot bellies. They are not musclebound, but are nonetheless incredibly strong. That’s the effect I am looking for.
If I was all musclebound it would be hard to buy suits, maybe people would be afraid to screw with me, and people might not be as surprised when I performed feats of superhuman strength.
It’s a much better effect if I appear weak or average
If you do get this superstrength, are going to use it for GOOD or for EVIL? That is, are you going to be a superhero or an archvillain? The comic book writers and artists are waiting for your answer. Also they need to know what color spandex you like.
Chimpanzees aren’t that much stronger in terms of absolute musculature than humans per se, but they have a higher proportion of fast twitch (type II) muscle fibers which gives them more power. In addition, the anatomy of the arms and shoulders of a chimp are evolved specifically for dynamic brachiating (moving by swinging) and are thus designed for pulling their body weight multiplied by dynamic factors. Human beings have traded this power for greater endurance (Type I fibers) and an anatomy for upright stature and plantigrade locomotion. Changing the composition of muscle fibers to a greater amount of Type II fibers in a human comparable to a chimpanzee wouldn’t necessarily give the same amount of practical strength, and would likely overstress shoulders and perhaps other joints.
Muscle origin/insertion points give Bonzo a bit of mechanical enhancement to his sheer muscle strength (as engineer notes). If I may offer a bit of a hijack: suppose we leave the genetics alone and instead hire Dr. Woofenstein to simply slide the insertions a bit further down the bones to the comparable position on the chimp? Would that yield anything like chimplike strength? Would that mod alone have as big of an impact as putting chimp muscles on a human configuration?
And my money says you’ll snap your own bones without a lot of conditioning & gradual lead-up to going to full power.
To add to this fantastic response it also has to do with the innervation patterns. Humans apparently have muscles made of relatively many smaller motor units that do not fire all at the same time. One spinal motor neuron creates one motor unit. This gives us the ability to finely grade responses and a good amount of fine motor control. Chimpanzees have relatively fewer motor neurons and thus motor units per muscle. When the muscle works it pretty much all works at the same time every time. We can train our motor units to fire closer to the same time - that’s where a fair amount of newbie lifting gains come from - but only so much, and not as much as if there were only a few motor units in the first place like a chimp has.
The trade off was not only for endurance but for variable fine control of movement as well.
I hope this isn’t a hijack, but what about humans who compete in powerlifting events? They are incredibly strong compared to regular humans. Is their strength that far off from a chimpanzee? I know that the comparison of human vs chimp strength is the subject of some controversy, but don’t some humans–whose unique physique allows it–already approach chimp strength?
The very short answer is “development”. There’s no conceivable way to genetically alter an adult, or even an infant, to make the muscolo-skeletal system morph into a new shape. All those shapes were predetermined in the first few weeks of embryonic development.
In principle, you could genetically engineer a human so that the muscles, including their skeletal attachments, develop into something resembling a chimp’s. However you’d need to start with an engineered embryo. Actually, you’d need tens of thousands of embryos that are allowed to develop for at least a few months in a surrogate mother, because we can’t effectively predict the genetic mutations necessary to make the changes you want. You’d have to try each candidate mutation a handful at a time, and most of the time the result will be an unexpected and terrible developmental abnormality.
Barring a singularity-like breakthrough, the research program to accomplish something like this would easily take a hundred years, and your atrocities would quickly surpass Mengele’s.
