The Drosophila PGC-1α homolog spargel modulates the physiological effects of endurance exercise

Endurance exercise is an inexpensive intervention that is thought to provide substantial protection against several age-related pathologies, as well as inducing acute changes to endurance capacity and metabolism. Recently, it has been established that endurance exercise induces conserved alterations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-02, Vol.7 (2), p.e31633-e31633
Main Authors: Tinkerhess, Martin J, Healy, Lindsey, Morgan, Matthew, Sujkowski, Alyson, Matthys, Erin, Zheng, Li, Wessells, Robert J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Angiogenesis
Animals
Biology
Biosynthesis
Drosophila
Drosophila Proteins - physiology
Endurance capacity
Exercise
Exhaustion
Fatigue tests
Fitness training programs
Gene expression
Genetic factors
Geotaxis
Gerontology
Heart
Heart diseases
Heat-Shock Proteins
Homology
Hyperactivity
Insects
Internal medicine
Mammals
Medical schools
Medicine
Metabolism
Musculoskeletal system
Pharmacology
Physical Conditioning, Animal
Physical Endurance - genetics
Physiological effects
Physiology
Positive Transcriptional Elongation Factor B - physiology
Respiration
Rodents
Transcription Factors
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Summary:Endurance exercise is an inexpensive intervention that is thought to provide substantial protection against several age-related pathologies, as well as inducing acute changes to endurance capacity and metabolism. Recently, it has been established that endurance exercise induces conserved alterations in physiological capacity in the invertebrate Drosophila model. If the genetic factors underlying these exercise-induced physiological alterations are widely conserved, then invertebrate genetic model systems will become a valuable tool for testing of genetic and pharmacological mimetics for endurance training. Here, we assess whether the Drosophila homolog of the vertebrate exercise response gene PGC-1α spargel (srl) is necessary or sufficient to induce exercise-dependent phenotypes. We find that reduction of srl expression levels acutely compromises negative geotaxis ability and reduces exercise-induced improvement in both negative geotaxis and time to exhaustion. Conversely, muscle/heart specific srl overexpression improves negative geotaxis and cardiac performance in unexercised flies. In addition, we find that srl overexpression mimics some, but not all, exercise-induced phenotypes, suggesting that other factors also act in parallel to srl to regulate exercise-induced physiological changes in muscle and heart.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0031633