Exercise and health: Can biotechnology confer similar Benefits?

Summary and Conclusions Long the province of physiologists who have contributed valuable insights in past decades, exercise science more recently has attracted the attention of molecular biologists, who have recognized the biological interest and medical importance of this field. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies also are beginning to take interest. This review has focused on adaptive responses of skeletal muscle to changing patterns of physical activity, and on the role of the calcium-calcineurin-NFAT signaling cascade in controlling gene expression in skeletal myofibers. Further advances in our understanding of signaling mechanisms that govern activity-dependent gene regulation in skeletal muscle could lead to drugs, gene therapy, or devices that can, at least in part, substitute for daily exercise. Although it is unlikely that such technologies would fully recapitulate exercise-induced adaptations that affect other tissues of the body, beneficial effects on work performance and whole-body metabolism have been demonstrated using gene transfer techniques to alter skeletal muscles in animal models. If it proves possible to drive similar effects in skeletal muscles in humans, the interventions capable of providing such effects would almost certainly find broad clinical application. Copyright: © 2005 Williams and Kraus.

Duke Scholars

Author William Erle Kraus Medicine, Cardiology