Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Originally scheduled for publication in time for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, we bring you a special focus on exercise metabolism and health, consisting of Reviews and Commentary revisiting foundational topics and highlighting new paradigms in exercise and muscle metabolism, as well as their broader implications for organismal health. Also, have a look at a selection of recent research articles in the fields of exercise and muscle biology.
As the world came to a standstill in the spring of 2020, so did the work on our Focus issue on exercise metabolism and health, which was originally scheduled for publication to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Individual differences in physical performance in the sedentary state and in response to exercise training have been observed in rodent and human studies. The genomic variants underlying these genetic components are unknown. Nonetheless, without a rich genetic endowment, world-class athletic performance is out of reach.
Kusuyama et al. review the effects of maternal and paternal exercise on offspring metabolic health in adulthood, the time of life when metabolic diseases typically surface.
Cellular metabolic demand skyrockets during intense exercise, thus rendering the communication of metabolic state essential for organismal homeostasis. Murphy, Watt and Febbraio discuss the physiological processes governing intertissue communication during exercise and the molecules mediating such cross-talk.
Hargreaves and Spriet review regulatory mechanisms of ATP resynthesis during exercise and summarize nutritional interventions that target muscle metabolism to enhance athletic performance.
Frampton et al. review emerging understanding of how the three primary gut-derived short-chain fatty acids—acetate, propionate and butyrate—affect skeletal muscle metabolism and function.
Exercise is a powerful modifier of organismal, tissue and cellular metabolism. In their Review, Koelwyn et al. highlight how exercise-induced alterations in the tumour microenvironment can affect immunometabolic mechanisms and how these changes may contribute to the benefits of exercise on cancer initiation and progression.
Maternal exercise, before and during pregnancy, has a beneficial effect on offspring. Harris et al. report that exercise-induced release of oligosaccharide 3′-sialyllactose in mouse breast milk mediates the metabolic health benefits of maternal exercise on offspring by improving glucose and insulin tolerance and cardiac function.
Brett et al. demonstrate that voluntary exercise improves quiescent muscle stem cell (MuSC) function and regenerative capacity in old but not young mice through exercise-induced upregulation of Cyclin D1 and repression of TGF-β activity in quiescent MuSCs.
The immune system is known to play an important role in regenerative processes. Here, Baht and colleagues identify Metrnl, a myokine/cytokine expressed in macrophages, as mediator of muscle regeneration. Metrnl promotes macrophage IGF-1 production that, in turn, activates satellite cells.
The role of skeletal muscle in non-shivering thermogenesis is not fully elucidated. Here the authors show that, in muscle, phospholipids can influence whole-body metabolic rate and counteract obesity by altering calcium signalling and inducing energy expenditure.
Maternal exercise during pregnancy results in metabolic benefits for offspring, but how mothers transfer these benefits to newborns has been a mystery. A new study now shows that a breast-milk component transmits the metabolic effects of exercise to offspring
Macrophages are required for postinjury skeletal muscle regeneration. A new study reveals that proinflammatory macrophages produce meteorin-like, which promotes muscle stem cell expansion through the Stat3–IGF1 axis and then shifts their inflammatory profile to allow return to homeostasis.
Obesity is the result of an imbalance between caloric intake from the diet and energy expenditure. A new study provides evidence that alterations in calcium transport efficiency in muscle lead to an increased metabolic rate and protect mice against diet-induced obesity.
Many commonly used inbred mouse strains carry random mutations that can affect the results of metabolic studies. Yet, awareness of such mutations as a source for experimental variation and seemingly contradictory results is lacking. It is time that scientists pay more attention to the identification, tracking and accurate reporting of mouse strains used in experiments.
This Review highlights the beneficial adaptive responses to exercise in skeletal muscle and other tissues as well as their molecular mechanisms. In addition, the possibility of exercise-like therapeutic interventions is discussed, providing relevant examples that have used this approach.
Moderate exercise improves cardiovascular health and is associated with physiological cardiac adaptations; by contrast, the hearts of endurance athletes can undergo maladaptations, including myocardial fibrosis and arrhythmias. In this Review, Parry-Williams and Sharma discuss whether excessive endurance exercise might damage both diseased and otherwise normal hearts.
Exercise has many beneficial effects on brain health, but how exercise is sensed by the brain has not been well understood. This Review describes evidence that supports the existence of a muscle–brain endocrine loop, in which muscle-induced peripheral factors enable direct crosstalk between muscle and brain.
Exercise is used to prevent and treat metabolic diseases. Finding the optimum time for exercise is important as skeletal muscle has many clock-controlled genes. This Review summarizes the current literature regarding the consequence of exercise at different times of the day.
The benefits of regular exercise extend beyond its effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. In this Review, the authors outline the non-traditional mechanisms underlying the benefits of exercise in CVD and highlight the importance of a holistic view of exercise in cardiovascular health.