So I was totally like going to write about becoming “An enemy of the White House” or maybe the harrowing tale of an AI scam I thought as sad, tragic but funny or a deeper look at my paranoia that the Flock news is just propaganda for the name “Avon” to not be known by the masses. But no matter what I tried, my brain wanted to share about Sparta. And thus, this week has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with how Sparta will never rise from the ashes. Buckle up if Sparta and Biology sound like a fun story or feel free to skip this week. Toodles
I was in high school when the movie 300 hit theatres. And for months after, the young men in the halls would call out "Sparta!" at the top of their lungs. And an "Ahoo!" would come back. Since I hadn't seen it, I was very confused — until in my twenties when I saw it on DVD. The movie 300 is based on the legendary kingdom of warriors called "Sparta." They were best known for the Battle of Thermopylae in which 300 men — according to the movie, not historians — held off between 100,000 and 300,000 Persian soldiers at a mountain pass, inspiring young men throughout the ages to rally in defense of family and country.
But our focus is not historical accuracy, but the physical feat of being strong enough to resist a larger force for three days. We are just as human as they were in 428 BC, so how were they able to achieve the level of endurance and cellular energy required, but we — and by we I mean I — collapse after walking two miles. Is it purely our level of personal exercise or is it something more? That more being about what your father did before you were born.
A segment of the scientific community is considering this question but it goes more like this: "What effect does the parents' health have on the offspring?" Or more specifically to the study we will look at: "What effect does the father's health have on the offspring?" Studies have suggested for years that a father's health at the time of conception matters to the health of his children — but scientists want to know "how" and "why." A segment of the scientific community is considering the role of sperm microRNA. MicroRNA turns up or down the expression of other genes like a volume dial. This particular group chose to study the effect of paternal exercise on offspring — or "Does my father's strength to kick someone into a hole affect my ability to kick someone into a hole?" — and whether the mechanism for transmission is sperm microRNA.
Experiments were set up and run across three generations of mice: fathers, children, grandchildren. Establishing three generations allowed for looking at how long the heritable expression lasted. Scientists have isolated the mitochondrial function to the PGC-1α transgene — mitochondria, the "powerhouse of the cell," provide it with energy, and a transgene is a gene that scientists insert into an animal's DNA to make it do something it wouldn't do naturally, like produce more of a certain protein. Then the scientists did what they do best and took the mice and split them into groups. The couch potato group (F0-Sed) represents what happens when you do nothing. The GMO muscle group (F0-PGC-1αWT) was engineered to overexpress the gene under study in their muscle tissue specifically. The exercise-trained group underwent eight weeks of exercise. The mothers weren't being tested in this experiment. They remained the same common black mice, C57BL/6J, throughout all generations.
Now, as the exercise-trained male mice were working out, the scientists kept track of their metabolic levels, testing endurance, blood lactate, VO2, and energy expenditure. After the initial eight-week period, PGC-1α was being expressed like the GMO mice group—meaning that the sperm of the exercised fathers looked molecularly similar to the sperm of the genetically engineered mice. They were also showing higher levels of the above metrics than the control. It was then time to mate.
Thus, the first generation of offspring (F1) were born! The scientists wanted to prove that the mechanism was in the microRNA, so instead of mating the exercise-trained fathers — which would transfer their entire DNA — they took a group of common mouse zygotes, the stage before embryos, and injected them with the microRNA from the exercise-trained fathers. By injecting only the microRNA, scientists could check whether that one component was enough to pass on the fitness boost to the offspring. And the gains still held against the couch potato group in the offspring. Unfortunately, the female mice showed no inheritance from the exercise-trained fathers. Scientists aren't entirely sure why — it may have something to do with how the microRNA interacts with sex chromosomes, but that question is still open. The females whose fathers were GMO did still show some endurance benefit.
But Sparta needs strong men for generations to have a true dynasty of warriors — and right now we've only tested the children. The scientists continued their quest by mating more mice, creating a second generation of offspring (F2). To test whether the effects lasted beyond one generation, the scientists bred from the couch potato and GMO groups in the second round. The exercise-trained fathers had already served their purpose in establishing the microRNA connection. I was disappointed to find that the gains did not hold in the grandchildren. The Spartan dream seemed to end with that finding. If you can't inherit the gains from your grandfather, you can't build Spartan warriors capable of holding back invaders. Though, this study isn't finished. Science must be continued and validated. Nobody asked whether a son who inherited the microRNA boost, and then also trained himself, would show even greater gains. That's where Sparta might still live.]And we can't forget that if each generation exercised, each would still see benefits from the base gain.
I guess I can tell the young men shouting "Ahoo" in the halls that Sparta could rise again — if you were willing to gather a group of men together to instill a practice of exercise across the generations.
This has a been A Geeky Production
