The Study

Researchers believe that genes for both inherited aerobic capacity and the adaptational response to aerobic exercise must be resolved in order to understand the role that aerobic capacity plays in defining the entire relationship between health and disease. Accordingly, Lauren Gerard Koch, Justin A. Ways, George T. Cicila, Michael R. Garrett, and Steven L. Britton, all from the Functional Genomics Laboratory, Department of Physiology and Molecular Medicine, Medical College of Ohio, Toledo, Ohio, have conducted a study entitled A Genome Scan for Loci Associated with Aerobic Running Capacity in Rats. Their long-term goal is to use these inbred model systems to identify genes, proteins, and intermediate phenotypes that collectively cause differences between low and high aerobic capacity.

The researchers will present their findings in full during the American Physiological Societys (APS) annual meeting, part of the "Experimental Biology 2002 conference. More than 12,000 will attend the conference being held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA from April 20-24, 2002.

Methodology

Their scan for intrinsic aerobic exercise capacity quantitative trait loci (QTLs) in rats was based on 210 polymorphic microsatellite markers and an F2 intercross population (n = 224) derived from Copenhagen (COP) and DA strains. (In previous experiments, the researchers tested maximal treadmill running capacity in a panel of eleven different inbred rat strains to evaluate the genetic variance that exists for intrinsic (untrained) aerobic capacity. At the extremes, DA inbred rats showed the highest capacity and ran 810 meters to exhaustion whereas Copenhagen (COP) rats were the lowest performers and became exhausted by 300 meters. This wide difference in phenotypic values suggested that the COP and DA rats could serve as parental strains for a genetic cross to test for an association between allelic variation (alter
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Contact: Donna Krupa
703-967-2751
American Physiological Society
22-Apr-2002