Exercise, PGC-1α, and metabolic adaptation in skeletal muscleThis paper article is one of a selection of papers published in this Special Issue, entitled 14th International Biochemistry of Exercise Conference – Muscles as Molecular and Metabolic Machines, and has undergone the Journal’s usual peer review process.

Abstract

Endurance exercise promotes skeletal muscle adaptation, and exercise-induced peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (Pgc-1α) gene expression may play a pivotal role in the adaptive processes. Recent applications of mouse genetic models and in vivo imaging in exercise studies have started to delineate the signaling-transcription pathways that are involved in the regulation of the Pgc-1α gene. These studies revealed the importance of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase/activating transcription factor 2 and protein kinase D/histone deacetylase 5 signaling transcription axes in exercise-induced Pgc-1α transcription and metabolic adaptation in skeletal muscle. The signaling-transcription network that is responsible for exercise-induced skeletal muscle adaption remains to be fully elucidated.