The Independent amongst others, is reporting on an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, wherein the writer - Dr Markus Schuelke, details a case where a genetic mutation has led to the spontaneous development of strong muscle tissue in a young German baby boy.
As long ago as 1997, the Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created "mighty mice", twice as muscular as their siblings, as a result of having their myostatin gene knocked out. Decades earlier, cattle breeders had made a similar discovery in developing a strain of cattle called Belgian Blues - animals that produce roughly twice the muscle and only a fraction of the fat of normal herds. Researchers later found that they too had inactive myostatin genes.
The hope now, according to papers published in yesterday's New England Journal of Medicine, is that it will be possible to develop a line of drugs to deplete myostatin, possibly by developing antibodies capable of blocking it. The Wyeth medical research laboratory in Massachusetts has already begun safety tests as a prelude to further research in this direction.
The full report can be read here.