Underdog eat your heart out.

In what is certain to alarm postal workers everywhere, scientists in China have produced a genetically modified dog that has twice the amount of its normal muscle mass. They say they are the first to use gene editing to produce customized dogs.

The scientists reported that they were able to create a veritable super Snoopy, by producing a beagle with twice the normal muscle mass by deleting a gene called myostatin.

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The report was published in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology. Gene editing allows scientists to disable genes or rearrange their DNA letters.

"Dogs serve as human companions and are raised to herd livestock, aid hunters, guard homes, perform police and rescue work, and guide the blind," said the scientists in their report.

"Dogs exhibit close similarities to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological, and anatomical characteristics, and thus are ideal genetic and clinical models to study human diseases. Gene target technology is a powerful tool to create new strains of animals with favorable traits," they added.

Myostatin inhibits muscle cell growth, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Naturally occurring mutations of myostatin have been known to cause some animals, including dogs, to produce increased muscle mass without severe adverse consequences.

However, gene-target dogs have not been developed due to the reproductive characteristics that are unique to their species, which limits the applications of dogs especially in the field of biomedical research.

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, told MIT Technology Review.

Although it is rare, occasionally a lack of myostatin has been found in people at birth. In 2004, doctors discovered a newborn who had bulging muscles due to a mutation in the gene.

TagsScientists Create Genetically Modified Super Dog, myostatin, the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, Liangxue Lai, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health