It is a fact that the level of athletes is increasing year after year, and proof of this are the continuous improvements in world records that are achieved each season. For an elite athlete, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach the top positions, extensive knowledge of training techniques has been and will continue to be crucial for improvement, but by no means the only factor.
In this sense, advances in science and technology could be the key to improving sports performance in the coming years. ¿What differentiates an amateur athlete from a professional? You've probably heard the comment that I'll never get to that level, I don't have their genetics. Is the key to the matter in the genes? The study of genetics in fields such as medicine is widespread, but what do we have at our disposal at the sports level? What do genetic tests consist of? ¿Can they give us direct answers about our performance? We explain it briefly.
We could understand the genome as the instruction manual of our organism, a large library where each and every one of the characteristics that we have as an individual are described. The color of your eyes, your character, and even your predisposition to have a disease are described in it. So, if it's as easy as going and reading our genome, why hasn't it been exploited even more?
Well, imagine now a bookstore with more than 25,000 books, and whose order is not easy to decipher. In it is information about your hair color, but which book should you open to find this information? Recent advances in the last decade in massive sequencing technologies have allowed an astonishing reduction in the cost of generating these libraries, expanding the field of application from medicine to, for example, sports. But now comes the second part, and that is to to be able to decipher this information and to know in which book we can find it.
"Humans share 95% of our DNA with chimpanzees. With these minute differences, how do you explain the great variety between people that we observe?"
In this sense, we find more and more centers where we can perform the so-called genetic test. Until now, these tests were only applied to fields such as medicine, to find out if you were prone to suffer from a certain disease; but advances in sequencing techniques have made it possible to broaden the spectrum of application to other fields, such as sports, which was waiting with open arms.
The genetic testing focus on both parts described above, first generate these libraries for each individual and then through previous studies and large databases they are able to relate some aspects such as your propensity to injury, your muscular capacity or your sporting endurance with the variants of your genes.
Let's get to the heart of the matter. The genetic difference between humans is extremely small, about 0.01%. In fact, humans share 95% of our DNA with chimpanzees. With these tiny differences, how do we explain the great variety between people that we observe? The answer lies in small changes that produce big effects.
Each individual has genetic variations that make them unique and it is when we analyze these variations that we find answers to questions such as our ability to perform a certain sport. To give you an example, the so-called snips (Single Nucleotide Polymosphism) are mutations in a single letter of our genetic code. (containing more than 6.4 billion letters), but which can have global consequences. A very radical example is the mutation of the gene that produces the so-called myostatin, a factor that inhibits muscle growth, which when inactivated by a mutation allows individuals to generate muscle mass outside normal values.
Another example would be the so-called "speed gene"a polymorphism of a gene encoding a protein, which allows the generation of fast twitch muscle fibers, enabling faster and more explosive running.
A simple saliva sample can give you an idea of your oxygenation capacity, your endurance or your recovery capacity.
Does it mean that we can predict whether we will be good runners based on the "version" of genes we have? No, it is not that simple. On the one hand, we have several copies of certain genes, this means that we may have a mutation in one, but it is compensated by the other copy that is not mutated. Also, environmental factors such as diet, training, etc. interfere in how that gene acts or even whether it is activated or not.
The current focus is on the following areas Generate lists of possible variations in some of our genes. and the effect they have on different aspects. Current genetic tests are based precisely on the observation of the genes contained in these lists, which have been previously generated from the study of thousands of individuals. In this way, with a simple saliva sample you can get an idea of your oxygenation capacity, your endurance or your recovery capacity, thus making training and nutrition plans much more personalized.
Even so, genetic tests can give us some clues, but they cannot guarantee that the sports performance we observe is due exclusively to our genetic makeup. Genes are important, but success is always associated with good training, diet and, as always, our willpower and ability to overcome.
LBDC (February 17, 2020) Genetic testing and sports performance Retrieved from: https://www.sport.es/labolsadelcorredor/test-geneticos-y-rendimiento-deportivo/amp/