Tissue-level dissection of obesity-exercise axis in adipose-muscle tissues

We studied the opposing effects of exercise training and high-fat diet at tissue-level resolution to reveal gene expression and pathway changes in subcutaneous white adipose tissue, visceral white adipose tissue, and skeletal muscle. We revealed gene modules consistently up-regulated by exercise training, which include fatty acid biosynthesis/beta-oxidation/metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, TCA cycle, and ROS response. Modules down-regulated by exercise training in all three tissues are antigen presentation, neutrophil degranulation, immune cell migration, phagosome-related genes, ECM-related genes, proliferation, and ribonucleotide biosynthesis. Taken together, exercise training improves fatty acid metabolism and cellular respiration similarly across the three metabolic tissues, and represses immune, ECM, proliferation and tissue-specific pathways. Bulk mRNA profiles of three metabolic tissues from 6-week old C57BL/6JN mice with 6-week high-fat diet and 3-week exercise training interventions