Skip to main content
2024 BMES Annual Meeting Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.

Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology

Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology - Poster Session C

Poster A10 - Long-term exercise training stabilizes chronic adipose tissue inflammation in men and women

Friday, October 25, 2024
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EST
Location: Exhibit Hall E, F & G

Introduction:  Physical exercise alters skeletal muscles due to changes in gene and metabolic activity, particularly with endurance training [1]. Transcriptomic data of muscle tissue has identified molecular mechanisms involved in muscle responses to short- and long-term physical activity [2]. Gene expression in adipose tissue (AT), a metabolically active tissue, has also been shown to be affected by short-term exercise but there is limited research on the effects of long-term exercise on AT gene expression [3]. Adaptations in AT metabolism could influence how other tissues respond to training, and an understanding of how AT is affected by long-term training is crucial to understanding the health benefits of exercise. Additionally, while the sexual dimorphism of AT from long-term effects of exercise has been researched in mice [4], there is little information on these effects in humans. This study aims to better understand adipose tissue and identify the sex and training differences present in the transcriptome.

Materials and

Methods:  This study involved the investigation of AT gene expression from 68 men and women based on their exercise backgrounds: long-term endurance-trained individuals (males (ME; n = 13) and females (FE; n = 10)) and long-term strength-trained individuals (males (MS; n = 14) and females (FS; n = 8)) with at least 15 years of experience, and untrained healthy controls (males (MC; n = 15) and females (FC; n = 8)). AT biopsies were collected at rest from all subjects. For 24 subjects (MC: n = 8, ME: n = 8, and MS: n = 8), biopsies were taken at rest and 180 minutes after subjects performed a session of either intense endurance or strength exercise in a randomized order one month apart. RNA was extracted from the AT in each biopsy which was sequenced and analyzed using the bioinformatics pipeline from the National Genomics Infrastructure Stockholm. It should be noted that female subjects also participated in the acute exercise portion of the study, however these samples are currently being sequenced and data will be analyzed and presented at BMES.
Statistical analyses were performed with R, using DESeq2 [5] to measure differential gene expression followed by fast gene set enrichment analysis (fGSEA) [6]. An adjusted p-value below 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant for differentially expressed genes and enriched pathways. fGSEA was based on a log-fold-change sorting using the Gene Ontology collections “biological process”, “cellular component”, and “molecular function” to identify pathways that were significantly enriched in the AT.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: After performing DESeq2, the groups with the highest number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were the ME vs. MC and FS vs. FC at baseline (Figures 1A-B). MS vs. MC had the lowest number of DEGs at baseline and after both types of acute exercise (Figures 1A, C, and D). The number of DEGs between ME vs. MS was also relatively low before and after exercise (Figures 1C and D).
In samples collected at rest, GSEA analysis showed that immune system-related pathways were upregulated in the male and female controls compared to the endurance and strength groups (Figure 2), while the most significantly upregulated pathways in male endurance and strength groups were pathways related to ribosomal and protein synthesis in both groups (Figure 2A and C). Despite not having pathways directly involved in ribosomal synthesis, the female endurance and strength groups saw an increase in activity in transcription-related pathways (Figure 2B and D). After acute exercise, there still appeared to be higher activity in immune system-related pathways in the control group no matter which type of intense exercise they performed (Figure 3). In endurance- and strength-trained men, there was a higher activity in ribosome- and cellular respiration-related pathways after acute endurance and resistance exercise (Figure 3).
The higher activity of immune-related pathways in the control groups at baseline and after acute exercise compared to the trained groups suggests a chronic inflammatory response of the adipose tissue in the absence of regular exercise. Furthermore, after intense exercise, the trained groups seem to increase their protein synthesis, likely resulting in the production of adipokines, resistin, and other fatty-acid binding proteins which play a role in regulating inflammation in AT [7]. This suggests that as an individual becomes more physically active, their AT becomes better at regulating these pro-inflammatory processes, resulting in more stable immunological activity [8].
The findings of this study indicate that long-term endurance and strength training affect gene expression and biological pathways in both males and females. The upregulation of immune-regulated pathways suggests a chronic inflammatory response in untrained men and women which can be stabilized through long-term training.

Acknowledgements (Optional):  [1] M. A. Chapman et al., “Skeletal muscle transcriptomic comparison between long-term trained and untrained men and women,” Cell Reports, vol. 31, no. 12, p. 107808, Jun. 2020. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107808

[2] N. K. Stepto et al., “Global gene expression in skeletal muscle from well-trained strength and endurance athletes,” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 546–565, Mar. 2009. doi:10.1249/mss.0b013e31818c6be9

[3] D. Thompson, F. Karpe, M. Lafontan, and K. Frayn, “Physical activity and exercise in the regulation of Human Adipose Tissue Physiology,” Physiological Reviews, vol. 92, no. 1, pp. 157–191, Jan. 2012. doi:10.1152/physrev.00012.2011

[4] G. M. Many et al., “Sexual dimorphism and the multi-omic response to exercise training in rat
subcutaneous white adipose tissue,” Nature Metabolism, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 963–979, May 2024. doi:10.1038/s42255-023-00959-9

[5] M. I. Love, W. Huber, and S. Anders, “Moderated estimation of fold change and dispersion
for RNA-seq data with deseq2,” Genome Biology, vol. 15, no. 12, Dec. 2014. doi:10.1186/s13059-014-0550-8

[6] G. Korotkevich et al., FAST gene set enrichment analysis, Jun. 2016. doi:10.1101/060012

[7] R. Mallick et al., “Fatty acids and their proteins in adipose tissue inflammation,” Cell
Biochemistry and Biophysics, vol. 82, no. 1, pp. 35–51, Oct. 2023.
doi:10.1007/s12013-023-01185-6

[8] F. M. Wensveen, S. Valentić, M. Šestan, T. Turk Wensveen, and B. Polić, “Interactions
between adipose tissue and the immune system in health and malnutrition,” Seminars in Immunology, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 322–333, Sep. 2015. doi:10.1016/j.smim.2015.10.006