11/10/2011 PERMALINK
Tweaking a gene makes muscles twice as strong. A team of researchers at EPFL, the University of Lausanne and the Salk Institute created super strong, marathon mice and nematodes by reducing the function of a natural inhibitor, suggesting treatments for age-related or genetically caused muscle degeneration are within reach. It turns out that a tiny inhibitor may be responsible for how strong and powerful our muscles can be. By acting on a receptor (NCoR1), they were able to modulate the transcription of certain genes, creating a strain of mighty mice whose muscles were twice a strong as those of normal mice.