Exercise changes our DNA

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The human genome is extremely complex and dynamic: genes are constantly activated or passive, depending on the biochemical signals that the body receives. When genes are active, they synthesize proteins that trigger a physiological response throughout the body. Changes in gene functioning (epigenetic changes) occur outside of genes, mainly through a process called DNA methylation. As a result of this process, groups of atoms - methyl groups - attach to the outside of genes like microscopic molluscs and make the gene more or less capable of receiving and responding to biochemical signals from the body, the article says.

Scientists know that methylation patterns change with lifestyle, but little was known about the link between methylation and exercise.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm recruited 23 young and healthy men and women who underwent physical tests and medical analyzes, including muscle biopsies in a laboratory. Participants in the experiment were asked to train only one leg on a stationary bike for 3 months. This was done because both legs would have been influenced by methylation patterns anyway by the study subjects' entire lifestyles, whereas one working leg showed only exercise-related changes, the article says.

After 3 months, scientists subjected the young people to repeated tests. Using sophisticated genome analyzes, the researchers found that in the genes of the muscle cells of the working leg, more than 5,000 regions acquired new methylation patterns. Many of the methylation changes have occurred in regions of genomes known as enhancers, which regulate gene activity by enhancing protein synthesis. Gene activity has been markedly increased or changed in the thousands of muscle cell genes studied by the researchers.

Most of the genes in question are known to have an impact on energy metabolism, insulin release and muscle inflammation. In other words, they affect the health and fitness of our muscles and the body as a whole. Through endurance training (…) we can induce changes that affect the way we use our genes and how we get healthier and more functional muscles that ultimately improve our quality of life - explains the graduate of the Karolinska Institutet Malen Lindholmwho directed the study.