What do we miss out on because the world wastes so much money and attention on climate? Imagine if some of that squandered money was spent on other fields such as medical research, such as the following accidental discovery, which if developed offers the possibility of longer life and superhuman athletic prowess.
Born to run; the story of the PEPCK-Cmus mouse
Richard W. Hanson and Parvin Hakimi
In order to study the role of the cytosolic form of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (GTP) (EC 4.1.1.32) (PEPCK-C) in skeletal muscle, PEPCK-Cmus mice were created by introducing the cDNA for the enzyme, linked to the human α-skeletal actin gene promoter, into their germ line. Two founder lines generated by this procedure were bred together, creating a line of mice that have 9.0 units/g skeletal muscle, as compared to 0.080 units/g in muscle from control animals. The mice were more active than controls in their cages and could run for up to 5 km, at a speed of 20 m/min without stopping (control mice run for 0.2 km at the same speed). Male PEPCK-Cmus mice are extremely aggressive, as well as hyperactive. During strenuous exercise, they use fatty acids as a fuel more efficiently than do controls and produce far less lactate than do control animals, perhaps due to the greatly increased number of mitochondria in their skeletal muscle. PEPCK-Cmus mice also store up to five-times more triglyceride in their skeletal muscle, but have only marginal amounts of triglyceride in their adipose tissue depots, despite eating 60% more than controls. The concentration of leptin and insulin the blood of 8 to 12 month of PEPCK-Cmus mice is far lower than noted in the blood of control animals of the same age. These mice live longer than controls and the females remain reproductively active for as long as 35 months. The possible reasons for the profound alteration in activity and longevity caused the introduction of a simple metabolic enzyme into the skeletal muscle of the mice will be discussed.
Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2491496/
One undesirable side effect was the mice were more aggressive. This was a major concern for the scientists who conducted the study. But the study mice were seriously souped up. The researchers wanted to understand the effect of the PEPCK-C modification, so they didn’t mess about, they increased levels of PEPCK-C to over 100x natural levels.
There are obvious questions – for example, would 10x natural levels, or even 2x natural levels, produce health benefits without the aggression?
This startling discovery occurred in 2008. Since then, as far as I know it has remained a laboratory curiosity. I’m not aware of any effort to find a way to turn this startling discovery into a therapeutic treatment, for people suffering the effects of old age.
The researchers point out some difficulties with turning this metabolic tweak into a therapeutic treatment, for example they don’t think that current gene therapies would be effective in modifying adult cells, currently the modification has to be applied in-vitro to embryos. But these are surely problems to be solved, we shouldn’t simply accept them as insurmountable obstacles.
Because if this modification could be realised as a treatment which could be applied to humans, it could have a remarkable effect on human health. Eat as much as you want, live like an athletic 20 year old until the very end of your life, a lifespan many decades longer than we currently enjoy.
All this from one small change. How many other small beneficial changes to metabolism are potentially available, just waiting for some researcher to stumble across them?
The answer to the question, what is the opportunity cost of climate waste? The answer is it costs us our life – decades of healthy, active life we could have had, if the money squandered on climate was directed towards something useful.
The following video shows just how dramatic the impact of the PEPCK-C modified metabolism is – two mice on a treadmill, one with the modification, one without.
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”One small change”. As a biotechnologist the first thing that came to mind was,”Why hasn’t this small change been selected for during evolution”?
Because it is not useful. The mouse will still not outrun a cat; and if the cat will catch it anyway next week, then the mouse better get on with making babies rather than running marathons. Also note that the mouse stores little fat – it will more easily succumb to famine.
Kind of like Schwarzenegger’s muscles. Not that useful.
Increased calorie burn may be a disadvantage in purely natural setting. The change appears to open a new path for metabolic burning of fat, so the modified mice had hardly any body fat, and had to eat a lot more than normal mice. If the food supply is interrupted the natural mice might last longer.
Did they name any of the mice Khan?
Aye!
I was thinking that this is how the Klingons came into being during the first Star Trek.
But Khan and ilk are also a possibility.
So mice that can comfortably move far further than others are more aggressive when constrained in the same area?
That may not be a direct result of the gene therapy.
The cat is out of the bag, as they say. Expect much, much more of the same in the coming years.
There will be a cheap CRISPR like appliance available within a decade.
And then the gene wars will start.
It is all a matter of perspective. I handed in the results of a project for a Master of Neuroscience degree (Degree was 50% course work and 50% a unique designed project by the student related to the brain) and was told to pull my socks up because other people ‘’Had made an effort’’. My research project’s future direction was to deliver, intranasally, a treatment for glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer (I had killed 80% of the cancers cancer stem cells in culture with my de novo treatment ). I agreed with my professor as I was tremendously impressed when he showed me another student’s project where they had attached probes to neurons in a fruit fly’s brain and had it cavort around in circles, up and down, hither and dither at the students dictates. What is a potential cure for a deadly cancer compared to that?
Why would you want to cure brain cancer by “intranasal delivery?” The local concentrations of the poison, whatever it may be, in the nasal mucous membranes would be extraordinarily high. You would probably have to supply a fresh nose after every application.
Also, killing cancer cells in vitro is not a useful metric. The problem of cancer treatment is not how to kill cancer cells; just throwing them down the stairs will do that. Instead, the problem is how to kill them while at the same time leaving the non-cancerous cells live — in a word, selective toxicity.
Sounds like the beginning of every zombie movie I’ve ever seen. 😉
And that’s real soziopathic.
https://youtu.be/WGU_4-5RaxU
mice and [wo]men.
Any odds on what future generations of Olympic competitors from communist countries will base their new levels of performance?
The opportunity cost of this global warming nonsense is astronomical, measured in multiples of the Appolo Program. The following article puts in perspective what could have been done with the money being wasted on this nonsense. The other articles demonstrate that it is pure nonsense.
Just How Much Does 1 Degree C Cost?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/just-how-much-does-1-degree-c-cost/
Climate “Science” on Trial; Temperature Records Don’t Support NASA GISS
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/climate-science-on-trial-temperature-records-dont-support-nasa-giss/
Climate “Science” on Trial; How Does Ice Melt In Sub-Zero Temperatures?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/climate-science-on-trial-how-does-ice-melt-in-sub-zero-temperatures/
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Criminal Case Against the Alarmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/climate-science-on-trial-the-criminal-case-against-the-alarmists/
Well it aint all smart screen waste but dumb green waste too as they’re discovering-
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/03/windy-clean-green-pollution/
You make some good points, Mr. Worrall, but this . . .
‘The answer to the question, what is the opportunity cost of climate waste? The answer is it costs us our life – decades of healthy, active life we could have had, if the money squandered on climate was directed towards something useful.’
. . . is a Red Herring fallacy. Money has been squandered on climate research. Leave at that. There is no linkage to mice research, or anything else.
Come on man!!! Longer life spans is just more time to mess up mother Gaia. Lol.
Hmmm… messing with Mother Nature’s design, we’d end up living 500 years and wouldn’t have better lives, perhaps? Or we’d be like Kathryn Kerr’s Elves in the Westlands novels? They stay young until one day, they’re suddenly old and they know death is near. Sad. Am I the only one who remembers that TV commercial ‘Don’t try to fool Mother Nature’? (ZAPPPP!)
Lots of comments on living longer but that’s not the issue – Cancer has been suspected as being linked to faulty mitochondrial ATP production, that is – it’s not the cells that are bad it’s the cells within the cells – the mitochondria that defines cancer. There are cancer “Stem Cells” that originate cancer cells. So if we are able to alter the cancer stem cells without killing them and cause them to start making cells with normal mitochondria then perhaps this constitutes a viable – non toxic cancer therapy.
You never know, but if we spend all the dosh on Climate Change then millions die because we didn’t have a look – That’s opportunity cost.
One more point too, the favoured greenie power station is an environmental energy scavenging machine that takes hectares of land to produce useful power, and that area needs to be detreed – Nobody in calculating carbon budgets ever counts the fact that the land the windmill or solar farm is on could have been forested and irrigated to absorb over 500Tonnes of CO2 per Hectare. The area occupied by a single megawatt windmill could sink over 2500 Tonnes of CO2 a year and the loss of this potential is never accounted properly as an opportunity cost.
How much clean water? How much third world electricity?
Opportunity costs of the climate obsession social mania:
Clean water- money wasted on wind and solar could have been diverted to clean water worldwide
Death from dirty water borne diseases
International treaty on clean burning coal tech
higher food prices (food to fuel created shortages)
slower economic growth in 3rd world- cheap and abundant industrial levels of energy could fuel boom of solid growth in poorest countries
slower growth means reduced improvement of health care
reduced quality of academic research- pressuring nearly all research to genuflect to “climate change” means other areas of study are under funded…
for starters
That’s a crazy argument, the areas of study are discrete and one does not preclude the other. But you knew that!
In Australia, Jack, the government cut back on Palliative care for Cancer Sufferers in order to fund the Green Slush fund – now tell me that cancer patients were not sacrificed on the Altar of Global Warming.
False logic. This is true in a infinite resources world. This is not OUR world, especially when resources are tax!
Sorry. “Taxes”.
none of the climate research is waste… and much of it would be being done even without the current level of climate change: the research bodies which conduct it have been researching snow, ice, temps, climate since the middle of or start of the last century or even earlier (NSIDC, Met Office, DMI, etc, etc)
You are right. Al Gore like scientist have a new house, work for many people, etcetera.
It’s waste for climate it self.
So you think all those salaries paid to liars to fiddle the temperature databases to maintain the CAGW illusion and the billions spent on worthless computer games that haven’t a hope of telling us anything useful about future climate haven’t been wasted?
But you consider mincing millions of birds and bats plus tens of thousands of sick and elderly dying of energy poverty a fair price to pay so a load of spivs like “Sir” Reg Sheffield, Chris Huhne, John Gummer, Mrs. Nick Clegg and Ed Davey can fatten their bank accounts is perfectly acceptable too, right?
Ah, but those spivs pay your wages, don’t they?
Have you apologised to Dr. Crockford for lying to try to discredit her yet, Skanky?
Personally I think the geneticists are working on preventing adulthood.
I see most of the attacks on clear gender in this culture as an attempt to create eternal juveniles and “intermediate sexuality,” so that people do not experience conjugial love, or raising young. These individuals would always be juveniles that do not care for any mate or offspring. Only their own cohort.
The geneticists know that many genes are expressed according to gender, and they think they can confuse this and delay it.
I mean juvenile in the sense of the metamorphic state you see in amphibians or other creatures. They cannot mate or raise young. Humans pass through this state and become adults because of love for the mate. Attachments then allow the brain to develop in an organized manner. Stable, loving attachments are the basis of human intelligence, not genetics.