Transcription profiling of soleus muscle from lean and obese Zucker rats following exercise training

Endurance exercise training has been shown to decrease whole-body and skeletal muscle insulin resistance and increase glucose tolerance in conditions of both pre-diabetes and overt type 2 diabetes. However, the adaptive responses in skeletal muscle at the molecular and genetic level for these beneficial effects of exercise training have not been clearly established in an animal model of pre-diabetes. The present study identifies alterations in skeletal muscle gene expression that occur with exercise training in pre-diabetic, insulin-resistant obese Zucker (fa/fa) rats and insulin-sensitive lean Zucker (Fa/-) rats. Treadmill running for up to 4 weeks caused significant enhancements of glucose tolerance as assessed by the integrated area under the curve for glucose (AUCg) during an oral glucose tolerance test in both lean and obese animals. Using microarray analysis, a set of only 12 genes was identified as both significantly altered (>1.5-fold change relative to sedentary controls; p