The Innovation (Jan 2023)

A single-cell transcriptomic atlas of exercise-induced anti-inflammatory and geroprotective effects across the body

  • Shuhui Sun,
  • Shuai Ma,
  • Yusheng Cai,
  • Si Wang,
  • Jie Ren,
  • Yuanhan Yang,
  • Jiale Ping,
  • Xuebao Wang,
  • Yiyuan Zhang,
  • Haoteng Yan,
  • Wei Li,
  • Concepcion Rodriguez Esteban,
  • Yan Yu,
  • Feifei Liu,
  • Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte,
  • Weiqi Zhang,
  • Jing Qu,
  • Guang-Hui Liu

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
p. 100380

Abstract

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Exercise benefits the whole organism, yet, how tissues across the body orchestrally respond to exercise remains enigmatic. Here, in young and old mice, with or without exercise, and exposed to infectious injury, we characterized the phenotypic and molecular adaptations to a 12-month exercise across 14 tissues/organs at single-cell resolution. Overall, exercise protects tissues from infectious injury, although more effectively in young animals, and benefits aged individuals in terms of inflammaging suppression and tissue rejuvenation, with structural improvement in the central nervous system and systemic vasculature being the most prominent. In vascular endothelial cells, we found that readjusting the rhythmic machinery via the core circadian clock protein BMAL1 delayed senescence and facilitated recovery from infectious damage, recapitulating the beneficial effects of exercise. Our study underscores the effect of exercise in reconstituting the youthful circadian clock network and provides a foundation for further investigating the interplay between exercise, aging, and immune challenges across the whole organism.

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