Novel whole blood transcriptome signatures of changes in maximal aerobic capacity in response to endurance exercise training in healthy women

Abstract

Maximal aerobic exercise capacity [maximal oxygen consumption (V̇o2max)] is one of the strongest predictors of morbidity and mortality. Aerobic exercise training can increase V̇o2max, but inter-individual variability is marked and unexplained physiologically. The mechanisms underlying this variability have major clinical implications for extending human healthspan. Here, we report a novel transcriptome signature related to ΔV̇o2max with exercise training detected in whole blood RNA. We used RNA-Seq to characterize transcriptomic signatures of ΔV̇o2max in healthy women who completed a 16-wk randomized controlled trial comparing supervised, higher versus lower aerobic exercise training volume and intensity (4 training groups, fully crossed). We found significant baseline gene expression differences in subjects who responded to aerobic exercise training with robust versus little/no ΔV̇o2max, and differentially expressed genes/transcripts were mostly related to inflammatory signaling and mitochondrial function/protein translation. Baseline gene expression signatures associated with robust versus little/no ΔV̇o2max were also modulated by exercise training in a dose-dependent manner, and they predicted ΔV̇o2max in this and a separate dataset. Collectively, our data demonstrate the potential utility of using whole blood transcriptomics to study the biology of inter-individual variability in responsiveness to the same exercise training stimulus.