To better understand the health benefits of lifelong exercise in humans, we conduct global skeletal muscle transcriptomic analyses of long-term endurance- (9 men, 9 women) and strength-trained (7 men) humans compared with age-matched untrained controls (7 men, 8 women). Transcriptomic analysis, Gene Ontology, and genome-scale metabolic modeling demonstrate changes in pathways related to the prevention of metabolic diseases, particularly with endurance training. Our data also show prominent sex differences between controls and that these differences are reduced with endurance training. Additionally, we compare our data with studies examining muscle gene expression before and after a months-long training period in individuals with metabolic diseases. This analysis reveals that training shifts gene expression in individuals with impaired metabolism to become more similar to our endurance-trained group. Overall, our data provide an extensive examination of the accumulated transcriptional changes that occur with decades-long training and identify important “exercise-responsive” genes that could attenuate metabolic disease.

为了更好地了解终身锻炼对人类的健康益处，我们对长期耐力（9名男性，9名女性）和受过强度训练的男性（7名男性）与年龄匹配的未经训练的对照进行了整体骨骼肌转录组学分析（7男8女）。转录组学分析，基因本体论和基因组规模的代谢建模证明了与预防代谢性疾病有关的途径发生了变化，尤其是在耐力训练中。我们的数据还显示，对照组之间存在明显的性别差异，并且通过耐力训练可以减少这些差异。此外，我们将我们的数据与研究代谢性疾病患者长达一个月的训练期前后肌肉基因表达的研究进行了比较。这项分析表明，训练会改变新陈代谢受损个体的基因表达，使其与我们的耐力训练组更加相似。总体而言，我们的数据提供了对数十年培训中积累的转录变化的广泛检查，并确定了可减轻代谢疾病的重要“运动应答”基因。