"Cell Metabolism" Exercise Metabolism Atlas - Different effects of exercise in the morning and evening

Exercising is known to improve health, and recent research has shown that its benefits to the body vary, depending on the time of day

Their research shows how the body produces different health-promoting signaling molecules after exercise in organ-specific ways, depending on the time of day

Professor Juleen R.

Using exercise to fix a malfunctioning biological clock

Almost all cells regulate their biological processes, known as circadian rhythms, within 24 hours

The international team of scientists wanted to learn more about this effect, so they conducted a series of experiments in the early morning or late at night

The result is an "exercise metabolic map" -- a comprehensive map of exercise-induced signaling molecules present in different tissues following exercise at different times of the day

"As this is the first comprehensive study summarizing time- and exercise-dependent metabolism in multiple tissues, generating and refining systematic models of metabolism and organ crosstalk is extremely valuable," said the Helmholtz Diabetes Center Munich Computational Discovery Research Head Dominik Lutter added

New insights include a deeper understanding of how tissues communicate with each other and how exercise can help to "retune" faulty circadian rhythms in specific tissues -- faulty circadian clocks linked to increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes

Jonas Thue Treebak, Associate Professor at CBMR at the University of Copenhagen, said: "Not only have we shown how different tissues respond to exercise at different times of the day, but we have also proposed how these responses can be linked to induce a coordinated adaptation to control the system's energy balance

Resources for Future Motion Research

This study has several limitations

"Despite its limitations, this is an important study that will help guide further research and help us better understand," said Shogo Sato, assistant professor in the Department of Biology and the Center for Biological Clock Research at Texas A&M University.

Co-first author Kenneth Dyar, Head of Metabolic Physiology at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center in Munich, highlights the atlas' utility as a comprehensive resource for exercise biologists