The London Olympics may turn out to be one of the cleanest in history in terms of banned substances but behind the scenes, scientists fear the next big challenge to fair play in sport: gene doping.

Over the past decade, scientific advances in the understanding of how genes control muscle activity have alarmed experts within the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) who believe that using genes, rather than drugs, will be the next way illicitly to boost athletic performance without fear of detection.

Although scientists are unanimous in believing that genetically enhanced athletes did not participate in London 2012, they are almost equally unanimous in saying that there will be an attempt to misuse the technology in a future Olympics.

"Is gene doping currently being practised? We don't have any evidence that it is," says Professor Steve Harridge, an expert on muscle physiology at King's College London.

"But in the future, as gene-therapy techniques become more refined, it becomes more likely, although I think we are many years away from that," he adds.

"The attraction of gene doping is that it is much harder to detect. But there are dangers because you don't know what it is going to keep on doing. The overall control of muscles can be brutally changed by the sudden introduction of a gene," he says.

Other experts believe that gene doping will not be so easily dismissed as too difficult or risky by those who are prepared to go to physical and ethical extremes in order to win medals.

"We don't know that gene doping would work, but it's technically feasible," says Andy Miah, a sports ethicist and director of the Creative Futures Research Centre at the University of the West of Scotland.

"If you look at the investment of the Wada over the past 10 years, this is their key issue, and it has been for a decade. It's hard to argue with the view that is real in a lot of sports," Dr Miah says.

Gene doping is defined by Wada as the non-therapeutic use of genes in order to enhance athletic performance, and the Montreal-based agency, which was set up in 1999, has spearheaded a campaign to develop scientific methods of detecting its illicit use in sport.

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