Imagine: you are cleaning your house, which is a mess because nobody but you knows how to clean up after themselves. You step on the cat’s tail, he darts out and away, you are so startled that you knock a wine glass off the table and instinctually try to catch it, cutting your hand deeply. Oh, that’s gonna need stitches. Except instead of going to the emergency room, you sit down, elevate your hand and compress it, and let the MG53 protein do what it does best. Maybe you call your mother while waiting for your hand t0 heal up, and thank her again for having the foresight of putting a genetic upregulation mechanism on your MG53 gene via the use of Crispr while you were an embryo. In an hour or so, you get up from your nap and continue on with your productive day, like nothing happened.
MG53 is a TRIM protein that is essential in repairing plasma membranes in the heart, muscle, and other organ tissues (Zehua et. al 2019). MG53 has also been found to increase the regeneration rate of tissues that have been damaged in a wide host of tissues in mice, while not negatively affecting lifespan or health. Experimental groups with elevated levels of MG53 and control groups without showed better lifespan and endurance and strength tests as compared to (Zehua et. al 2019). The implications of these experiments could change the fate of the human race forever, MG53 in the bloodstream seems to be incredibly powerful and if successfully implanted as a gene in humans, should be a standardized human modification.
Advanced regeneration in such a wide array of fibers in the body could result in reduced effects of aging. Senior citizens could hike until they die, give high schoolers a run for their money at the sports games and may show less signs of aging to boot. Such a gained ability could also reshape the healthcare system across the globe. More bandaids, less surgeries. There is seemingly no end to the new landscape that could emerge as a result of a readily available source of the MG53 protein in the bloodstream. Wounds may become altogether less fatal as well, and all this with minimal risk to metabolic-well-being, especially in conjunction with the protein rhMG53 (Zehua et. al 2019).
Scientists involved with this study induced muscle injury in mice with elevated levels of MG53 and rhMG53 and found that compared to the wild-type control mice, the study mice showed significantly greater contractile function of previously-damaged muscles.
So I hereby submit that should gene therapy involving production of MG53 in the bloodstream prove safe and effective in helping regeneration rates in tissues throughout the body, it should be administered to all humans and added to the genome until further notice. This protocol would save humanity millions of dollars and hours a year in costs involving health complications. This protocol could allow more people to participate in extreme sports, living with less fear and inspiring others more, thus allowing us all to live larger and with less fear, something society could surely benefit from in this time in history.
Cited Sources
Bian, Z., Wang, Q., Zhou, X. et al. Sustained elevation of MG53 in the bloodstream increases tissue regenerative capacity without compromising metabolic function. Nat Commun 10, 4659 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12483-0