Project description:Exposure to cold temperatures is known to mimic the effects of exercise, protecting against obesity and improving metabolic health. Cold is known to act through the sympathetic nervous systems and -adrenergic signaling, but here we report that cold temperature can directly activate a variety of gene programs in muscle independent of -adrenergic signaling.
Project description:Background: Cold acclimation and exercise training were previously shown to increase peripheral insulin sensitivity in human volunteers with type 2 diabetes. Although cold is a potent activator of brown adipose tissue, the increase in peripheral insulin sensitivity by cold is largely mediated by events occurring in skeletal muscle and at least partly involves GLUT4 translocation, as is also observed for exercise training. Results: To investigate if cold acclimation and exercise training overlap in the molecular adaptive response in skeletal muscle, we performed transcriptomics analysis on vastus lateralis muscle collected from human subjects before and after 10 days of cold acclimation, as well as before and after a 12-week exercise training intervention. Methods: Cold acclimation altered the expression of 756 genes (422 up, 334 down, P<0.01), while exercise training altered the expression of 665 genes (444 up, 221 down, P<0.01). Principal Component Analysis, Venn diagram, similarity analysis and Rank–rank Hypergeometric Overlap all indicated significant overlap between cold acclimation and exercise training in upregulated genes, but not in downregulated genes. Overlapping gene regulation was especially evident for genes and pathways associated with extracellular matrix remodeling. Interestingly, the genes most highly induced by cold acclimation were involved in contraction and in signal transduction between nerve and muscle cells, while no significant changes were observed in genes and pathways related to insulin signaling or glucose metabolism. Conclusions: Overall, our results indicate that cold acclimation and exercise training have overlapping effects on gene expression in human skeletal muscle, but strikingly these overlapping genes are designated to pathways related to cell remodeling rather than metabolic pathways.
Project description:Background: Cold acclimation and exercise training were previously shown to increase peripheral insulin sensitivity in human volunteers with type 2 diabetes. Although cold is a potent activator of brown adipose tissue, the increase in peripheral insulin sensitivity by cold is largely mediated by events occurring in skeletal muscle and at least partly involves GLUT4 translocation, as is also observed for exercise training. Results: To investigate if cold acclimation and exercise training overlap in the molecular adaptive response in skeletal muscle, we performed transcriptomics analysis on vastus lateralis muscle collected from human subjects before and after 10 days of cold acclimation, as well as before and after a 12-week exercise training intervention. Methods: Cold acclimation altered the expression of 756 genes (422 up, 334 down, P<0.01), while exercise training altered the expression of 665 genes (444 up, 221 down, P<0.01). Principal Component Analysis, Venn diagram, similarity analysis and Rank–rank Hypergeometric Overlap all indicated significant overlap between cold acclimation and exercise training in upregulated genes, but not in downregulated genes. Overlapping gene regulation was especially evident for genes and pathways associated with extracellular matrix remodeling. Interestingly, the genes most highly induced by cold acclimation were involved in contraction and in signal transduction between nerve and muscle cells, while no significant changes were observed in genes and pathways related to insulin signaling or glucose metabolism. Conclusions: Overall, our results indicate that cold acclimation and exercise training have overlapping effects on gene expression in human skeletal muscle, but strikingly these overlapping genes are designated to pathways related to cell remodeling rather than metabolic pathways.
Project description:The fast skeletal muscle protein α-actinin-3 is absent in 1.5 billion people worldwide due to homozygosity for a nonsense polymorphism in the ACTN3 gene (R577X). The prevalence of the 577X allele increased as modern humans moved to colder climates, suggesting a link between α-actinin-3 deficiency and improved cold tolerance. Here, we show that humans lacking α-actinin-3 (XX) are superior in maintaining core body temperature during cold-water immersion due to changes in skeletal muscle thermogenesis. Muscles of XX individuals displayed a shift towards more slow-twitch isoforms of myosin heavy chain (MyHC) and sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) proteins, accompanied by altered neuronal muscle activation resulting in increased tone rather than overt shivering. Experiments on Actn3 knockout mice showed no alterations in brown adipose tissue (BAT) properties that could explain the improved cold tolerance in XX individuals. Thus, this study provides a clear mechanism for the positive selection of the ACTN3 X-allele in cold climates and supports a key thermogenic role of skeletal muscle during cold exposure in humans.
Project description:The annotation of the Affymetrix HTA 2.0 array was updated to optimise the detection of both coding and non-coding RNA in human skeletal muscle biopsy samples by removing invalid and low signal-high-variance probes. A transcript level CDF specific to skeletal muscle is provided to use within the standard aroma.affymetrix pipeline.