People too busy – or lazy – to go for a run or hit the gym could swallow a pill and get the same boost, thanks to two different drugs that make mice run longer and further than un-doped mice.
"The first group that will use [them] is athletes," says Ronald Evans, a molecular biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. "Athletes have a very low threshold for experimenting with and using performance-enhancing drugs, and I have no doubt they will be the early adopters of both drugs."
The drugs seem to work by activating a key metabolic protein called PPAR-delta, which tells cells to burn extra fat and make more mitochondria – the cell's power-producing structures.
In 2004, Evans' team showed that "marathon mice", genetically engineered to crank up the protein, outpace normal mice on a treadmill.
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