Metabolomics and Exercise: possibilities and perspectives

Abstract

Metabolomics Metabolomics is known as a comprehensive analysis to identify, quantify and characterize molecules with low molecular weight called metabolites. This approach is gaining more and more space in several research fields, such as in the health, exact and biological sciences, comprising the quartet of the omics sciences (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics). These platforms together can provide relevant information for understanding the so-called Systems Biology 1,2,3,4. Metabolites are substrates and final products of cellular metabolism, that have essential roles in energy production, storage, signal transduction, apoptosis, in addition to providing an analysis of the physiological state of the organism 5,6. Thus, the analysis of the metabolic profile by metabolomics has become a powerful tool, widely used for clinical diagnosis. While genes and proteins are subject to epigenetic regulations, and post-transcriptional amendments, respectively, metabolites represent the direct signature of biochemical, cellular activity, and feature the same basic chemical structure regardless of species. Therefore, the metabolomic profile can be more easily correlated with phenotype, compared to genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic profiles 7. With the use of metabolomics, biochemical analysis can be performed at various times, in the same organism, to better understand the dynamic changes in metabolism, through the changes in the concentrations of these metabolites 3. Metabolic concentrations can vary in response to disturbances in cellular homeostasis through genetic, nutritional and pathophysiological changes, and also through physical exercise 8 .

Exercise‐induced α‐ketoglutaric acid stimulates muscle hypertrophy and fat loss through OXGR1‐dependent adrenal activation

“…Although both endurance and resistance exercise lead to fat loss (Benito et al, 2015), resistance but not endurance exercise increases muscle mass and resting metabolic rate (Poehlman et al, 1991(Poehlman et al, , 2002Dolezal & Potteiger, 1998;Hunter et al, 2000), providing better weight loss maintenance in long-term observation. There have been numerous analyses of plasma metabolites following acute endurance exercise in both clinical and animal models (Lewis et al, 2010;Huffman et al, 2014;Aguer et al, 2017;Duft et al, 2017;Starnes et al, 2017;Sato et al, 2019), which has generated a number of metabolomics "signatures" in the circulation. These plasmas metabolic profiles provide signatures of endurance exercise performance and cardiovascular disease susceptibility and also identify molecular pathways that may modulate the salutary effects on cardiovascular function.…”

Physical activity reduces anxiety and regulates brain fatty acid synthesis

“…Non-targeted approaches of metabolomic analysis allow for comprehensive understanding of the biology of exercise. The novelty of the present study is the determination of the cortical and the hippocampal metabolomic profiles in a mouse model of prolonged voluntary exercise, while previous investigations focused primarily on the measurements of composition of metabolites in various peripheral tissues of trained animals or in body fluids of humans [44]. Based on the obtained results, we propose that physical activity has a profound impact on the brain metabolome, which may contribute to the impact of exercise on cerebral homeostasis and functioning.…”

Association of skeletal muscle and serum metabolites with maximum power output gains in response to continuous endurance or high-intensity interval training programs: The TIMES study – A randomized controlled trial

“…Metabolomics has already been used in a range of exercise studies as recently reviewed [24]. For example, changes in serum and plasma metabolites have been described in response to acute and chronic adaptation to ET or HIIT programs [25–27], as well as differences in metabolite profile in relation to variable cross-sectional CRF levels, but not investigating MPO [28, 29].…”