Acute vs long-term exercise adaptation of adipose tissue and skeletal muscle in humans: A matched transcriptomics approach after 8-week training-intervention

Background Exercise can prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes (T2D). It impacts not only physically-utilized organs like skeletal muscle (SM) but also subcutaneous adipose tissue (AT). In contrast to SM, molecular adaptations in AT after exercise remain unsettled.

Aim To characterize AT transcriptomic changes in response to acute and repeated bouts of exercise in comparison to changes in SM of matched human donors.

Methods Sedentary participants (27±4 yrs) at high risk for T2D underwent 8-week supervised endurance-exercise 3x1h/week at 80% VO2peak. Before, 60min after the first and last exercise bout and 5 days post intervention, SM and AT biopsies were taken for transcriptomic analyses (n=8-10).

Results We found 37 significantly regulated transcripts (FC > 1.2, FDR<10%) directly after the first and 144 after the last exercise in AT compared to 394 and 420 respectively, in SM. Only 5 respectively 17 transcripts overlapped between tissues highlighting their differential response. Upstream and enrichment analyses revealed reduced transcripts of lipogenesis and inflammation directly after exercise in AT, which was still evident 5 days after the intervention. Neither term was associated with SM transcriptomic changes. Data also pointed to a modulation of the circadian clock in AT by the intervention. No evidence for beigeing was found in AT along with unchanged respiration.

Conclusions AT shows an acute transcriptional response to exercise, with down-regulation of many insulin-dependent transcripts suggesting hormonal regulation as major driver. The anti-inflammatory adaptations after acute and repeated exercise observed in AT potentially counteract metabolic syndrome progression towards diabetes.

 

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publication History

Article published online:
26 May 2022