Muscle Memory of Exercise Optimizes Mitochondrial Metabolism to Support Skeletal Muscle Growth | American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology | American Physiological Society Exercise protects against age-related declines in skeletal muscle mass and function while improving overall health. Exercise can also prime long-term muscle health to enhance adaptations upon exercise retraining, a phenomenon termed muscle memory that remains largely understudied. To assess how prior endurance training elicits a lasting metabolic memory in skeletal muscle, we utilized C57BL/6 mice fed either a control (CD) or obesogenic diet (HFD) that underwent 4-week training, detraining, and retraining periods. Our results show that exercise retraining attenuated weight gain and potentiated muscle growth, even with reduced voluntary running volumes. Training increased fiber size (fCSA), which disappeared with detraining and was recovered with retraining regardless of diet, pointing to a glycolytic-to-oxidative fiber shift. Transcriptomic analysis (bulk RNA-seq) of the retrained muscle revealed a robust enhancement of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) and mitoribosomal genes, paralleled by increases in OxPhos protein complex IV levels, higher long-chain fatty acid oxidative capacity (ACADL), and sustained citrate synthase activity 1 week after retraining, reinforcing the optimization of mitochondrial metabolism. While transcriptomic evidence revealed a major overlap between HFD- and CD-fed mice, discrepancies in protein abundance emerged, which point to an intricate regulation of mitochondrial programming that supports the muscle memory of growth. Our study identifies common and selective mechanisms by which the muscle memory of exercise overrides dietary challenges and promotes fiber hypertrophy, offering insight into potential mechanisms to leverage to promote healthy aging.

Finally here!! So excited to share my lab’s first paper. Clay did an amazing job trying to define how the muscle memory of exercise supports growth 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼📈 #muscle #mitochondria
@apspublications.bsky.social

journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Open Rank, Tenure Track Position – Metabolic Physiology - Salt Lake City, Utah job with University of Utah | 674355 The Department of Nutrition and Integrated Physiology (NUIP) at the University of Utah seeks a Tenure Track faculty member at the rank of Assistant...

We have an Open Rank tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Nutrition & Integrative Physiology! Looking for a new colleague interested in making the University of Utah their new home to build a metabolic research program. Please share! @uofunuip.bsky.social

Hank and Nasrin looked like rockstars 🎸 presenting their work at @apsphysiology.bsky.social !!
#proudmentor

So proud of Clay Weidenhamer who did a fantastic job presenting @apsphysiology.bsky.social in the Hot Topics in Muscle Biology!! #proudmentormoment

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

Diet-Induced Obesity Modulates Close-Packing of Triacylglycerols in Lipid Droplets of Adipose Tissue Adipose-derived lipid droplets (LDs) are rich in triacylglycerols (TAGs), which regulate essential cellular processes, such as energy storage. Although TAG accumulation and LD expansion in adipocytes ...

Exciting paper from the Leal and Anakk labs studying the biophysical properties of adipose lipid droplets in response to diet!! Happy to have contributed a small part to this story! #lipidomics @ahsillinois.bsky.social pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Amazing 🤩 !!

I curated a list of really smart scientists (and me) of Latin American and/or Hispanic background to follow… Still trying to figure out Bsky, so I apologize if there’s already one going around. Please help spread the word, and let me know if you’d like to be added.

go.bsky.app/ReQgt2H

Thank you for putting this together!!!🙌🏽

This is the wittiest, most comprehensive compendium of starter packs for anyone experiencing the great migration!