Regulation of skeletal muscle energy/nutrient-sensing pathways during metabolic adaptation to fasting in healthy humans. Homo sapiens

The aim of the study was to investigate how short-term fasting affects whole-body energy homeostasis and skeletal muscle energy/nutrient-sensing pathways and transcriptome in humans. For this purpose, twelve young healthy men were studied during a 24-hour fast. Skeletal muscle biopsies were collected and analyzed at baseline and after 4, 10 and 24h of fasting. As expected, fasting induced a time-dependent decrease in plasma insulin and leptin levels, whereas levels of ketone bodies and free fatty acids increased. This was associated with a metabolic shift from glucose towards lipid oxidation. Transcriptome profiling identified genes that were significantly regulated by fasting in skeletal muscle at both early and late time-points. Collectively, our study provides a comprehensive map of the main energy/nutrient-sensing pathways and transcriptomic changes during short-term adaptation to fasting in human skeletal muscle Overall design: Total RNA obtained from skeletal muscle biopsies collected at 1.5, 4 10 and 24h post-meal in healthy men subjected to a 24h-fast