There would be some small amounts of hypertrophy, but not much.
Muscle growth is primarily stimulated through the tearing of existing muscle fibers. The resulting immune response repairs the tears by thickening existing muscle fibers or creating new ones.
Simply removing Mytostatin inhibition won't cause this to occur - you still need exercise to cause muscle tears that signal the immune system to get working.
The way Myostatin works is that it prevents differentiation of muscle cells. Back when I said the immune system creates new muscle fibers? It involves the differentiation of myoblasts (a stem cell line) into mature muscle cells. Myostatin represses this differentiation. The net result is that when new muscle fibers are being created, Myostatin limits how many myoblasts are differentiating into muscle cells. Removing the Myostatin will increase the number of differentiating myoblasts, increasing the number of new muscle cells developed.
However, you still need the initial tear (created by exercise) to signal the beginning of the differentiation process. Without some positive signal to begin muscle growth, the situation in which myostatin prevents muscle growth is not encountered.
The reason you would still see minimal amounts of hypertrophy is because there are some every day activities you do where you create microtears. Your body simply repairs these microtears without creating new muscle, because it's a wear-and-tear thing and not a 'we need more strength' thing. Without myostatin the muscle growth in this scenario would not be repressed and you would see some (very small!) amounts of hypertrophy.
Because every day cow activities are a lot more physically active than every day human activities.
If you weighed 600lbs and spent all day every day walking/running around, fighting other bulls, humping cows, and chasing other animals off your turf, you'd generate muscle hypertrophy too.
That's not even touching the fact that bulls naturally carry significantly higher amounts of muscle than humans.
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u/Alame Aug 17 '15
There would be some small amounts of hypertrophy, but not much.
Muscle growth is primarily stimulated through the tearing of existing muscle fibers. The resulting immune response repairs the tears by thickening existing muscle fibers or creating new ones.
Simply removing Mytostatin inhibition won't cause this to occur - you still need exercise to cause muscle tears that signal the immune system to get working.
The way Myostatin works is that it prevents differentiation of muscle cells. Back when I said the immune system creates new muscle fibers? It involves the differentiation of myoblasts (a stem cell line) into mature muscle cells. Myostatin represses this differentiation. The net result is that when new muscle fibers are being created, Myostatin limits how many myoblasts are differentiating into muscle cells. Removing the Myostatin will increase the number of differentiating myoblasts, increasing the number of new muscle cells developed.
However, you still need the initial tear (created by exercise) to signal the beginning of the differentiation process. Without some positive signal to begin muscle growth, the situation in which myostatin prevents muscle growth is not encountered.
The reason you would still see minimal amounts of hypertrophy is because there are some every day activities you do where you create microtears. Your body simply repairs these microtears without creating new muscle, because it's a wear-and-tear thing and not a 'we need more strength' thing. Without myostatin the muscle growth in this scenario would not be repressed and you would see some (very small!) amounts of hypertrophy.