Physiological Adaptations to Progressive Endurance Exercise Training in Adult And Aged Rats: Insights from The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC)

Abstract While regular physical activity is a cornerstone of health, wellness, and vitality, the impact of endurance exercise training on molecular signaling within and across tissues remains to be delineated. The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) was established to characterize molecular networks underlying the adaptive response to exercise. Here, we describe the endurance exercise training studies undertaken by the Preclinical Animal Sites Studies component of MoTrPAC, in which we sought to develop and implement a standardized endurance exercise protocol in a large cohort of rats. To this end, Adult (6-month) and Aged (18-month) female (n = 151) and male (n = 143) Fischer 344 rats were subjected to progressive treadmill training (5 days/week, ∼70–75% VO2max) for 1, 2, 4, or 8 weeks; sedentary rats were studied as the control group. Eighteen solid tissues, as well as blood, plasma, and feces, were collected to establish a publicly accessible biorepository and for extensive omics-based analyses by MoTrPAC. Treadmill training was highly effective, with robust improvements in skeletal muscle citrate synthase activity in as little as 1–2 weeks and improvements in maximum run speed and maximal oxygen uptake by 4–8 weeks. For body mass and composition, notable age- and sex-dependent responses were observed. This work in mature, treadmill-trained rats represents the most comprehensive and publicly accessible tissue biorepository, to date, and provides an unprecedented resource for studying temporal-, sex-, and age-specific responses to endurance exercise training in a pre-clinical rat model.