Department of Sports Medicine, University Medicine Tübingen, Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 6, D-72076, Tübingen, Germany.
Sports Med. 2019 Apr;49(4):509-523. doi: 10.1007/s40279-019-01070-4.
Physical activity and sports play major roles in the overall health status of humans. It is well known that regular exercise helps to lower the risk for a broad variety of health problems, such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Being physically active induces a wide variety of molecular adaptations, for example fiber type switches or other metabolic alterations, in skeletal muscle tissue. These adaptations are based on exercise-induced changes to the skeletal muscle transcriptome. Understanding their nature is crucial to improve the development of exercise-based therapeutic strategies. Recent research indicates that specifically epigenetic mechanisms, i.e., pathways that induce changes in gene expression patterns without altering the DNA base sequence, might play a major role in controlling skeletal muscle transcriptional patterns. Epigenetic mechanisms include DNA and histone modifications, as well as expression of specific microRNAs. They can be modulated by environmental factors or external stimuli, such as exercise, and eventually induce specific and fine-tuned changes to the transcriptional response. In this review, we highlight current knowledge on epigenetic changes induced in exercising skeletal muscle, their target genes, and resulting phenotypic changes. In addition, we raise the question of whether epigenetic modifications might serve as markers for the design and management of optimized and individualized training protocols, as prognostic tools to predict training adaptation, or even as targets for the design of "exercise mimics".
体育锻炼在人类整体健康状况中起着重要作用。众所周知,定期运动有助于降低多种健康问题的风险,如心血管疾病、2 型糖尿病和癌症。身体活动会引起骨骼肌组织中多种分子适应性改变,例如纤维类型转换或其他代谢改变。这些适应性改变基于运动引起的骨骼肌转录组变化。了解其性质对于改善基于运动的治疗策略的发展至关重要。最近的研究表明,特定的表观遗传机制,即诱导基因表达模式变化而不改变 DNA 碱基序列的途径,可能在控制骨骼肌转录模式中发挥重要作用。表观遗传机制包括 DNA 和组蛋白修饰以及特定 microRNA 的表达。它们可以被环境因素或外部刺激(如运动)调节,并最终导致转录反应的特定和精细的变化。在这篇综述中,我们强调了运动引起的骨骼肌中表观遗传变化、其靶基因以及由此产生的表型变化的最新知识。此外,我们提出了这样一个问题,即表观遗传修饰是否可以作为设计和管理优化和个体化训练方案的标志物,作为预测训练适应性的预后工具,甚至作为“运动模拟物”设计的靶点。