If you ever want to fly or walk on water there isn't much modern science can do but if you want
to run around 1940s europe punching nazis in the face and take on red skull well modern science
might have your back don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an upload and let's jump in
in 1941 comic book readers were introduced to a scrawny kid with a heart of gold
named steve rogers at the time he didn't have the chops to join the army but his character and
a little luck landed him a spot in a secret super soldier program spearheaded by dr abraham erskine
rogers was given a super soldier serum placed in a vitaray chamber and was bombarded with radiation
he emerged not superhuman but at the absolute peak of possible human performance but what was
the secret treatment that went down with erskine well you could potentially make a captain america
style super soldier with a combination of drugs a cocktail of anabolic steroids and human growth
hormone could have given roger's raging muscles though what allows these bodybuilders to look like
this anabolic steroids promote protein production in skeletal muscle and increase muscle rebuilding
following exercise which would explain captain america's overall change in physique as well as
his super strength but while these drugs would improve his strength they wouldn't do much to
affect his stamina for that the captain would need to be increasing the amount of oxygen available to
cells by blood doping blood transfusions where red blood cells are taken from the body to be
reintroduced prior to high endurance activity increase red blood cell amount which deliver vital
oxygen to muscle tissue across the body on top of increasing performance it also stimulates wound
healing a trait captain america has in creatine supplements a molecule found naturally in muscle
tissue that helps your body produce high bursts of energy during periods of intense exercise could
have topped them off during boss fights going up against red skull or when he and thor were duking
it out so a cocktail of steroids muscle enhancers and constant blood transfusions might be able to
make a super soldier but we never saw any of that in the movies and even the comics didn't
touch on it a much better approach to creating a captain america style super soldier that fits
much more closely with what we see in the movies is that the serum affected cap's dna since 2003
when scientists completed the human genome mapping project we've learned very precisely what physical
properties many genes in our dna are associated with things like muscle growth and how much
oxygen our blood can carry so if the serum cap was injected with could suppress certain genes
and hyperactivate other ones we might be able to induce something like cap's amazing transformation
and this could all be possible with crispr technology that allows scientists to edit
human genomes at will crispr is based on how some bacteria have protected themselves from viruses
for millions of years when certain bacteria encounter viruses they capture snippets of
virus dna and incorporate it into their own dna this allows the bacteria to remember the viruses
and how to fight them in case they ever run into the same virus again kind of like how the human
immune system can remember viruses even decades after their first battle scientists figured out
they could use the same process to add or delete genetic information in any organism even humans
the crispr technology could deactivate certain genes like those that code for fat storage and
could increase the activity of other genes like those that code for muscle growth and development
in fact this has already been done like in these dogs but the secret super soldier program needed
to pump out thousands of soldiers for the war and couldn't afford long operating and recovery times
this is where the vitaray chamber comes into play while in the mcu radiation is treated as a sort
of black box of power inducing capabilities see the hulk this has some basis in real life
we've known since the 1940s the effect that energy or more specifically electromagnetic waves like
gamma rays can have on cells chemotherapy is a prime example of this but in this case we want
to strengthen cells not destroy them and it's possible these vitarate chambers were doing two
things the first and most obvious the chamber is injecting steve rogers with both the crispr
therapy and enough biomass to transform him from a hundred pound simp to 160 pound muscular chad
this second thing the vitaray chamber is doing is more subtle it involves the intense light we see
shining out of the glass window gene editing is an energy intensive process the crispr technology
needs to open up the dna of trillions of cells edit them and zip them back up and like we see
from captain america the first avenger the whole transformation happens in a very short time frame
that means that the cap would need a ridiculous amount of molecular
energy far more than his body could supply that's where this light comes into play way back
in 1905 even before this scene was set albert einstein discovered the photoelectric effect
or the ability of light to excite a material simply by the energy it inherently possessed
and he discovered the shorter the wavelength of light the more energy it could transmit now if
they injected cap with x-rays or gamma rays they would have destroyed his cells liking chemotherapy
but instead they floated his body with longer less powerful light in the visible spectrum while this
wasn't enough energy to kill cap cells it was powerful enough to imbue his body with enough
energy to undergo his crispr transformation now this all may sound a little far out but there
are already hundreds of light induced medical procedures in development today and all rely on
specific wavelengths or energies of light to make them work so this technology surprisingly could
be grounded in reality with modern day science give gene editing a few more years to progress
and who knows we might be running around with an army of chris evans what a world to live in so it
looks like even with modern day science we might be able to replicate captain america after all but
what do you think could crispr technology explain the cap's transformation be sure to let us know
down in the comment section below have a great day and remember there's always more to learn
you