If you’ve ever read recent dystopian sci-fi books such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake or Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl,
you’d know that one of their common predictions is that in the future
genetically mutated super animals will run amok and make day-to-day life
very dangerous for the world’s remaining humans. Now Technology Review
brings us word that scientists in China claim to have used DNA
manipulation to create a stronger, faster breed of dogs that will
ominously be used for various police and military operations. 
Gulp.
It
seems that there’s a mutation that naturally occurs in
whippets’ myostatin genes that causes them to gain significant muscle
bulk. Researchers in China have figured out how to simulate this gene
mutation in other breeds of dogs and have used it to create beagles that
have twice the normal muscle mass.
“[The
dogs have] more muscles and are expected to have stronger
running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military)
applications,” Liangxue Lai, a researcher with the Key Laboratory of
Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and
Health, explained in an email to Technology Review.
Although
Lai and his fellow researchers don’t plan to breed these super beagles
for commercial use, their research does open the door for other groups
to create and sell genetically modified pets.
What’s
particularly freaky about this research is the way that they got these
dogs to bulk up: They essentially injected a chemical agent into dog
embryos that is designed to destroy the dogs’ myostatin genes that
naturally inhibit their muscle growth. Apparently, the effects of
removing this gene have been well studied and there aren’t any known
averse impacts of removing it but… it’s nonetheless a wee bit
disconcerting.
To learn much more about the science behind this crazy DNA manipulation, check out Technology Review’s full report here.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
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