The superbaby mutation
Evolution of a new master race?
by Jonathan Sarfati
News reports are talking about a German baby ‘superman’.1 He is only 4, but his thigh already has twice
the muscle mass of most kids his age, and half the fat. He is strong enough
to hold 3 kg (7 lb) weights outstretched, hard for many adults. His strength
is the result of a genetic mutation (an inherited copying mistake in the DNA ‘instructions’)
that gives him the extra amount of muscle.
The child’s mother was a muscular 24-year-old former sprinter who had one
copy of this mutation, but paired with the normal gene. Her brother and three
other close male relatives also seem to have this mutation, because they are very
strong. One of them was a construction worker who can unload heavy curbstones
by hand.The boy has two copies of the mutated gene, the other one almost certainly
from his father.
Evolution proved?
Is this not an example of ‘evolution in action’, a way in which organisms
can become ‘bigger and better’? Not at all. It pays to look closely
at the nature of the mutation in this case. Normally, muscle growth is well
controlled, and one controller is a protein called myostatin or growth/differentiation
factor 8 (GDF-8). This new mutation actually damages the
gene that produces myostatin.2 As a result, the myostatin
protein is not properly formed and the muscles grow in an uncontrolled fashion.
Evolution from goo to you via the zoo requires a huge number of
mutations to increase information content. This is to build new
structures and enzymes that didn’t previously exist. If this were occurring,
we would expect to find lots of information-increasing mutations.
But instead we have yet to find even one heritable random mutation of this type.3 Rather, observed mutations are either neutral
or information-losing.
Notice that we don’t deny there are beneficial mutations, i.e. mutations
that benefit their possessors. But even these are going in the wrong
direction to help turn bacteria into babies. The ‘superbaby’ mutation
is just one in a long line of information-losing mutations that might count
as beneficial. It obviously can’t explain how muscles and myostatin
evolved in the first place.
Indeed, readers of Creation
magazine and our website might remember that we have written on exactly the same
thing in animals.4 The Piedmontese
and Belgian Blue cattle are extremely muscular precisely because a mutation
results in the production of a defective myostatin protein.5
A similar mutation has produced muscular mice. It is debatable whether the
mutation is really beneficial in the long run. The Belgian Blue mutation
has side effects, for example, reduced fertility. And doctors worry that this
superboy might later suffer from health problems including heart trouble.
It should not be surprising that a protein like myostatin is there for a reason,
so destroying its effectiveness would cause problems.
But the main point is still that the mutation is losing information, not
gaining it. So it is just like the wingless beetles on windswept islands.
They can’t fly up so the wind doesn’t sweep them into the sea, which
is a good thing for their survival. But they have still lost
the power of flight. This doesn’t explain how wings or flight could
have evolved in the first place.6
References and notes
- Linda Johnson, Doctors discover genetic mutation that makes toddler
super strong, Anchorage Daily News, 23 June 2004, <www.adn.com/24hour/healthscience/v-printer/story/1454021p-8836512c.html>.
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- Markus Schuelke, Kathryn R. Wagner, Leslie E. Stolz, Christoph
Hübner, Thomas Riebel, Wolfgang Kömen, Thomas Braun, James F. Tobin, Ph.D.,
and Se-Jin Lee, Myostatin mutation associated with gross muscle hypertrophy in a
child, New England Journal of Medicine 350(26):2682–2688,
24 June 2004, <content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/350/26/2682>.
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- For some caveats about this general claim, see
Batten, D., The adaptation of bacteria to feeding on
nylon waste, TJ 17(3):3–5,
2003; R. Truman, The unsuitability of B-cell maturation as an analogy for neo-Darwinian
Theory, <www.trueorigin.org/b_cell_maturation.asp>, March 2002.
Return to text.
- Anon., Muscular cattle: a beneficial mutation? Creation 20(4):9, 1997. Return to text.
- J. Travis, Muscle-bound cattle reveal meaty mutation, Science
News 152(21):325, 22 November 1997. Return to text.
- Carl Wieland,
Beetle Bloopers, Creation 19(3):30, 1997.
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