Niki Sanders is super-strong. Much like many of the Olympic athletes currently competing in Beijing. Unlike the lovely swimmers on the US Olympic team, though, Niki doesn’t look like a body builder. So maybe it’s the quality, and not the quantity, of her muscles that are something special.

Enter researcher H. Lee Sweeney, a physiologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Although his work focuses on developing treatments that could stop age-related muscle decline, it also has plenty of implications for athletes seeking every advantage they can get in building muscles. His work on gene therapy for building better muscles is outlined in a Scientific American article.

It’s all about gene doping. And it really doesn’t sound that different from the Heroes speculations about The Company genetically modifying our superpowered characters.