UAB Researchers Create Most Comprehensive Exercise Biology Dataset to Date

The most robust database of exercise biology ever produced is being developed by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers, in collaboration with their partners across the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium, or MoTrPAC. The initial publication, featured on the May cover of Nature, provides a molecular map of the physiological responses to exercise across 19 different tissues and 25 molecular platforms in an animal model of aerobic exercise.

“In the field, we know that exercise is good for you, but this model will help us better understand why it is so good for you across multiple systems in the body,” said Thomas W. Buford, Ph.D. associate dean for Research in the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine and director of the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine.

In the study, six-month-old male and female Fischer 344 rats were subjected to progressive treadmill endurance exercise training over the course of eight weeks. These analyses revealed expansive biological insights into the adaptive responses to endurance training, including widespread regulation of immune, metabolic, stress response and mitochondrial molecular pathways. Many of these changes were highly relevant to human health, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular health and tissue injury and recovery.

Researchers observed the temporal nature of exercise allowing them to better understand its effects on the different tissues in the body over time. Some of the main findings include that lung and white body fat tissues had many uniquely shared genes, and expression patterns suggested that exercise led to decreased inflammation in the lungs and an increase in immune cells in white fat tissue. The heart and calf muscles had the second-largest set of uniquely shared genes and showed that exercise led to an enrichment of the mitochondrial metabolism pathways, which help generate energy for the body.

The timing of physiological changes in the body also differed among tissues. Researchers found that changes in the small intestine and plasma occurred in the first two weeks of exercise, while changes in the fat tissues showed themselves later in the aerobic training. Buford says that one of the most interesting findings is that more than half of the physiological changes observed over eight weeks differed between males and females, indicating that many of the effects of exercise are sex-specific.

“This work can be leveraged to deepen our understanding of exercise-related improvements on health and disease management,” Buford said. “Our hope is that this research can be used in the future to help tailor exercise plans to each individual for the best possible health outcomes, or develop new drugs that could mimic at least some of the beneficial impacts of exercise.”

From UAB, the MoTrPAC Consortium Steering Committee comprises Buford, Anna Thalacker-Mercer, Ph.D., associate director of the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine, Marcas Bamman, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the Heersink School of Medicine and Gary Cutter, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the UAB School of Public Health.

MoTrPAC is an NIH-funded consortium that was launched in 2016 to uncover how exercise improves and maintains our health at the molecular level. This ten-year program is the largest targeted NIH investment of funds into the mechanisms of how physical activity improves health and prevents disease. It is funded by the NIH Common Fund and overseen in collaboration with the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

“UAB is just one of the many institutions across the nation who contributed to the development of this molecular map,” Buford said. “This is a consortium-level effort, and we could not do this work without the collaboration of our MoTrPAC partners. These findings are just the beginning, and we are grateful for the opportunity to work alongside our partners as we continue to generate new ideas and knowledge in the years to come.”