Genetic Doping In Sports

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Some experts think that genetic doping is taking place ever since the Olympic Games in Athens. And while the methods to achieve genetic doping advance quickly the ways to detect it are lacking.


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Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Only stupid athletes use doping. And only those who are exceptionally stupid still use things such as steroids because discovering this kind of doping is an easy task for modern laboratories. Yet, there are such exceptionally stupid individuals. Just look at all the top athletes convicted of doping.

Sadly, current science has technologies that can be abused for doping without punishment. One of these technologies is genetic engineering. Some experts think that genetic doping has been used for decades now. For example, Lee Sweeney from the University of Florida thinks the last Olympic games where the winners weren’t using genetic doping were in 2004 in Athens.

In 2012, the technology known as CRISPR/Cas9 opened the door for cheaper genetic doping. CRISPR is primarily used for targeted snips of the genetic information and then changing it with different genes. You can use it to stop certain genes from working or even paste a new gene into the DNA.

Though, for the purposes of genetic doping, this might be too heavy-handed. Such a procedure could leave marks in the cells that were changed. Though, it still might be hard for scientists to discover as they might appear as a result of natural mutation. But CRISPR also comes with more elegant methods that leave no marks in the DNA.

What can for example be done is to change the expression of carefully selected genes either slowing their activity or make them more active. The results of such doping will appear very natural. Even regular training itself changes the expression of certain genes.

The CRISPR technology is already in its testing period for medical procedures. But the bar there is quite high. The effect of such treatment has to be permanent (or at least long-term), ideally as powerful as possible and 100 % safe. But that’s not the case for genetic doping. Athletes need only short-term effects to perform optimally in key races. Nor do the athletes search for extremely powerful effects. That would only bring attention to them. And safety? Well, let’s just say winning takes precedent.

A team of biochemists from the Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln decided to develop a test that would discover genetic doping that would be abusing the CRISPR technology. The results of their research were recently published.

CRISPR has two basic components. The first is a short ribonucleic acid chain. This component serves as targeting and these RNA chains change based on where the change shall take place and aren’t very stable. Detecting them would thus be quite complicated. So, the scientists decided to search for the other component the Cas9 protein.

The scientists added a small amount of the Cas9 protein into human plasma and then analyzed the plasma. They were capable of easily discovering the protein. They used CRISPR on lab mice and tried to detect the protein in their blood. They found out that the Cas9 is most highly concentrated in the blood roughly 2 hours after administration of the CRISPR treatment and can still be detected about 8 hours later.

While there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before we can start convicting athletes for abusing genetic doping this is at least the first step in the right direction.

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