gene expression profiles in T-lymphocytes and Monocytes of participants of the Tour de France 2005

Exercise has an measureable impact on gene expression profiles of white blood cells. While subpopulations of white blood cells undergo specific changes in answer to physical load we focused on pan T-lymphocytes and Monocytes. These cells are in direct contact to organs influenced by exercise and additionally should be affected by alterations of nutrient and gas composition in blood, which occur as a consequence of exercise. We screened the gene expression profiles of top athletes at the beginning and the end of the Tour de France 2005 and at at the annual rest period in order to find functional processes that are differentially expressed in answer to the longtime and high load training and competition. Therefor we filtered out genes with significant changes in gene expression more than 1.5fold between two of the three conditions and build overlap lists of this list and GO (gene ontology) lists and KEGG (kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes) lists. We observed a strong decline in immune functions and an equal decline in metabolic processes. Keywords: response of gene expression to long-time and high load exercise 12 professional cyclists from two german top teams gave written agreement to participate to this study. We collected 12ml of whole blood at each time point and isolated T-lymphocytes out of 4ml and monocytes out of 8ml whole blood. The experimental groups are divided into rest (6 replicates in Tcells/ 7 replicates in Monocytes), start (10 replicates in each cell type) and final (8 replicates in Tcells/ 9 replicates in Monocytes). This means that we collected samples at the beginning and the end of the Tour de France and during the annual rest period of the athletes.