The controversial Belgian Blue is getting its fishy counterpart in an enhanced trout with 15-20 percent bigger “six-pack” muscle mass than its puny comrades.
The genetically-modified rainbow trout has been developed by Professor Terry Bradley of the University of Rhode Island, USA, along the same principles that was utilised for the Belgian Blue beef breed, i.e. inhibition of myostatin, a protein that slows growth.
“Belgian blue cattle have a natural mutation in myostatin causing a 20 to 25 percent increase in muscle mass, and mice overexpressing myostatin exhibit a two-fold increase in skeletal muscle mass”, Professor Bradley told Science Daily.
“But fish have a very different mechanism of muscle growth than mammals, so we weren’t certain it was going to work.”
But it did! The team injected thousands of rainbow trout eggs with various DNA types designed to inhibit myostatin, resulting in a fish that developed what a British newspaper, naming it “Arnie, the Terminator Trout”, described as “body-builder physique”.
No difference in behaviour from non-modified trout has been noticed, Professor Bradley claimed, adding that the method will have commercial benefits, since larger fish can thereby be grown on the same amount of food.