Unbelievable: Scientists made a new breed of stronger, faster dogs using DNA manipulation

Scientists in China claim to have used DNA manipulation to create a stronger, faster breed of dogs that will ominously be used for various police and military operations.

It seems that there's a mutation that naturally occurs in whippets' myostatin genes that
causes them to gain significant muscle bulk.
Researchers in China have figured out how
to simulate this gene mutation in other breeds
of dogs and have used it to create beagles
that have twice the normal muscle mass.
"[The dogs have] more muscles and are
expected to have stronger
running ability, which is good for hunting,
police (military) applications," Liangxue Lai, a
researcher with the Key Laboratory of
Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou
Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, explained
in an email to Technology Review .
Although Lai and his fellow researchers don't
plan to breed these super beagles for
commercial use, their research does open the
door for other groups to create and sell
genetically modified pets.
What's particularly freaky about this research
is the way that they got these dogs to bulk
up: They essentially injected a chemical agent
into dog embryos that is designed to destroy
the dogs' myostatin genes that naturally
inhibit their muscle growth. Apparently, the
effects of removing this gene have been well
studied and there aren't any known averse
impacts of removing it but… it's nonetheless a
wee bit disconcerting.