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Thread: Children's Genetics

  1. #1
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    Default Children's Genetics

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    Are there any exercises a pre-teen can do to alter or enhance their genetic power/explosiveness, before they become an adult?

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    No. External stimula do not alter genetics. Lysenko is long dead.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    No. External stimula do not alter genetics. Lysenko is long dead.
    yeah man, for as long as I can remember I have never been able to jump very well at all, and I always played sports.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    No. External stimula do not alter genetics. Lysenko is long dead.
    Are fast twitch muscles genetically ordained as well, or can they be trained early to increase? That is, are speed and power essentially the same?

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    I am not current on the details of this muscle physiology. Speed and power are both dependent on the ability to rapidly recruit motor units into contraction. This is discussed in PPST3.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    No. External stimula do not alter genetics. Lysenko is long dead.

    Let's formulate this a little more carefully:

    External stimuli cannot alter the content of someone's genes.
    External factors can and do alter the expression/transcription of genes, some of which may be passed on to offspring through DNA methylation, etc.

    So, the question should be something like "Does exposure to hard work/training on young children impact the distribution of fast/slow muscle fibers, through alteration of genetic expression?"

    This does seem like an evolutionarily useful bit of phenotypic plasticity, but I find it highly unlikely that there is much research aiming to answer the question.

    Is there any work looking at the genes that control the distribution of fiber types in muscle tissue, and so on? I've no idea.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tertius View Post
    External factors can and do alter the expression/transcription of genes, some of which may be passed on to offspring through DNA methylation, etc.

    So, the question should be something like "Does exposure to hard work/training on young children impact the distribution of fast/slow muscle fibers, through alteration of genetic expression?"

    This does seem like an evolutionarily useful bit of phenotypic plasticity, but I find it highly unlikely that there is much research aiming to answer the question.
    An excellent point. I am aware of no research that demonstrates an improvement in explosiveness in slow children. If I'm wrong, I'm sure we will soon be better informed...

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    This is the epigenetic issue: we have mapped the human genome, but are only starting to understand the various influences (environmental, behavioral, etc.) that effect its expression. DNA methylation is just one possible influence.

    This article discusses the issue in the context of muscle memory: Does skeletal muscle have an ?epi?-memory? The role of epigenetics in nutritional programming, metabolic disease, aging and exercise - Sharples - 2016 - Aging Cell - Wiley Online Library

    It's an interesting read, and sums the recent thought on the issue quite well.

    However, the exercise stimulus that has been studied to date has almost all been aerobic "cardio."

    From the paper: "There are currently little or no studies into epigenetic modulation post acute anabolic stimuli such as that of acute resistance exercise or those induced by muscle hypertrophy*via chronic resistance exercise."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eagle4Christ View Post
    This is the epigenetic issue: we have mapped the human genome, but are only starting to understand the various influences (environmental, behavioral, etc.) that effect its expression. DNA methylation is just one possible influence.

    This article discusses the issue in the context of muscle memory: Does skeletal muscle have an ?epi?-memory? The role of epigenetics in nutritional programming, metabolic disease, aging and exercise - Sharples - 2016 - Aging Cell - Wiley Online Library

    It's an interesting read, and sums the recent thought on the issue quite well.

    However, the exercise stimulus that has been studied to date has almost all been aerobic "cardio."

    From the paper: "There are currently little or no studies into epigenetic modulation post acute anabolic stimuli such as that of acute resistance exercise or those induced by muscle hypertrophy*via chronic resistance exercise."
    There is a bunch of interesting stuff in this paper.

    Firstly, a big take away is how important maternal nutrition is, in terms of how it impacts body composition of offspring (including muscle fiber type distribution).
    A second is the potential life-long durability of early life epigenetic alterations of skeletal muscle.

    An interesting implication that they don't really discuss much has to do the odd multinucleate structure of skeletal muscle. Early life exposure to positive/negative stresses may create a life-long "memory" in muscle nuclei. But, because satellite cells can produce new, additional nuclei in response to a training stimulus, even if those early life exposures produce very durable markers in 'original' nuclei, it may be possible to either mitigate or augment the effect of those modifications through the addition of new nuclei with a different set of epigenetic markers (and hence different response to stimuli).

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