What is myostatin and why is it so important for muscle growth?
Myostatin is a protein produced by a specific gene sequence in the DNA of nearly every vertebrate animal. Controlling myostatin is the holy grail of extreme muscle growth. Why would your body need myostatin? It has been theorized that this vestigial control over muscle gains was needed to prevent an organism from being overly muscled and thus fall more easily to predation either because they would have been too bulky to speed away or because they just looked more delicious. So through Darwinian selection, having little or no myostatin has become exceedingly rare among animals and humans. Nevertheless those rare survivors live normal, happy, albeit well-muscled lives. As examples, the Belgian Blue bull and the Piedmontese breeds are born without the gene to produce myostatin. From a health standpoint, these animals are not at all adversely affected by the absence of myostatin. Since we don’t have much use for myostatin, is it dangerous to have none? So far it seems that health is not af
