Exercise-induced changes in climbing performance

Drosophila models used to simulate human ATP1A1 gene mutations that cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2 disease and refractory seizures

JOURNAL/nrgr/04.03/01300535-202501000-00034/figure1/v/2024-05-14T021156Z/r/image-tiff Certain amino acids changes in the human Na+/K+-ATPase pump, ATPase Na+/K+ transporting subunit alpha 1 (ATP1A1), cause Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2 (CMT2) disease and refractory seizures. To develop in vivo models to study the role of Na+/K+-ATPase in these diseases, we modified the Drosophila gene homolog, Atpα, to mimic the human ATP1A1 gene mutations that cause CMT2. Mutations located within the helical linker region of human ATP1A1 (I592T, A597T, P600T, and D601F) were simultaneously introduced into endogenous DrosophilaAtpα by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing, generating the AtpαTTTF model. In addition, the same strategy was used to generate the corresponding single point mutations in flies (AtpαI571T, AtpαA576T, AtpαP579T, and AtpαD580F). Moreover, a deletion mutation (Atpαmut) that causes premature termination of translation was generated as a positive control. Of these alleles, we found two that could be maintained as homozygotes (AtpαI571T and AtpαP579T). Three alleles (AtpαA576T, AtpαP579 and AtpαD580F) can form heterozygotes with the Atpαmut allele. We found that the Atpα allele carrying these CMT2-associated mutations showed differential phenotypes in Drosophila. Flies heterozygous for AtpαTTTF mutations have motor performance defects, a reduced lifespan, seizures, and an abnormal neuronal morphology. These Drosophila models will provide a new platform for studying the function and regulation of the sodium-potassium pump.

Early life exercise impacts physiology and lifespan in a sex- and genotype-dependent manner in a Drosophila melanogaster exercise model

Exercise is a common strategy for disease prevention or management, including for diabetes and cardiac dysfunction. However, exercise response varies immensely between individuals, and in humans, the same exercise treatment can lead both to positive and negative responses. Drosophila melanogaster is an established model for exercise research that can be leveraged to understand this variation in exercise response. Here, we investigated how two early life exercise treatments differing in duration (5 and 20 days) impact the animals' health- and lifespan in four genotypes. Specifically, we measured lifespan, activity level, body condition, physical ability, and reproductive output in this exploratory study to gain insights into potential trade-offs. For most measures, we found both immediate and long-term effects, with some effects persisting weeks past the cessation of exercise. The effect of the exercise treatment was context-dependent, with treatment, sex, and genotype interactions determining phenotypes. For example, the 20-day treatment did not exhibit a consistently larger effect than the 5-day treatment. Similarly, neither the 5-day nor the 20-day treatment impacted lifespan, but two specific genotype/sex combinations showed altered lifespan after exercise. The 20-day treatment decreased climbing performance compared to controls up to several weeks after treatment ended in some genotypes. Together, our results highlight the complex, interacting factors controlling exercise response and demonstrate that early life exercise can have long-lasting effects in the Drosophila exercise model even though most individual groups show no response.

Regular meta-analysis of the impact of sports activities intervention on some items of the national student physical health standards for adolescents

Background

By using meta-analysis to evaluate the effects of exercise on adolescent body mass index (BMI), standing long jump, sit ups, lung capacity, sitting forward bending, 50 m running, and 800 m running, a large amount of literature will be reviewed to reveal the key role of exercise in the healthy development of adolescents. This study aims to promote the development of adolescent physical health and solve the common problem of declining physical fitness, comprehensively improve the physical fitness of adolescents, and provide decision-making support for policymakers. The research results will provide methodological references for precise and effective intervention practices, further improve adolescent physical fitness, and lay a solid physiological foundation for their comprehensive development.

Methods

A literature search was conducted on China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and PubMed, collecting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that investigated the effects of physical activity on adolescent physical fitness according to predefined criteria. The quality of these studies was assessed, and their outcome data were analyzed using RevMan 5.4 software. The analysis encompassed 13 articles with a total of 4,633 participants, examining measures such as mean difference (MD) and heterogeneity, followed by subgroup analyses.

Results

The meta-analysis revealed that physical activity had a moderate to high effect on adolescent performance in sit-ups (MD = 4.91, 95% CI = 3.41-6.41), vital capacity (MD = 120.66, 95% CI = 48.67-194.46), sit-and-reach test (MD = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.09-1.56), 50-meter dash (MD = -1.05, 95% CI = -1.48 to -0.62), and 800-meter run (MD = -18.48, 95% CI = -24.98 to -11.97). Conversely, its influence on BMI (MD = -0.31, 95% CI = -1.87 to 1.24) and standing long jump (MD = 0.1, 95% CI = 0.05-0.15) was relatively low.

Conclusion

Engaging in physical activities significantly improves adolescent physical fitness. The most effective regimen involves a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercises, with each session lasting 30 min, performed three times per week for at least 2 months. The extent of improvement in various fitness indicators, reflecting different aspects of physical fitness, is influenced by factors such as the nature of the physical activity, intervention duration, exercise frequency, and age.

Systematic Review Registration

PROSPERO, identifier CRD42024568197.

Inbreeding-Driven Innate Behavioral Changes in Drosophila melanogaster

Drosophila melanogaster has long been used to demonstrate the effect of inbreeding, particularly in relation to reproductive fitness and stress tolerance. In comparison, less attention has been given to exploring the influence of inbreeding on the innate behavior of D. melanogaster. In this study, multiple replicates of six different types of crosses were set in pair conformation of the laboratory-maintained wild-type D. melanogaster. This resulted in progeny with six different levels of inbreeding coefficients. Larvae and adult flies of varied inbreeding coefficients were subjected to different behavioral assays. In addition to the expected inbreeding depression in the-egg to-adult viability, noticeable aberrations were observed in the crawling and phototaxis behaviors of larvae. Negative geotactic behavior as well as positive phototactic behavior of the flies were also found to be adversely affected with increasing levels of inbreeding. Interestingly, positively phototactic inbred flies demonstrated improved learning compared to outbred flies, potentially the consequence of purging. Flies with higher levels of inbreeding exhibited a delay in the manifestation of aggression and courtship. In summary, our findings demonstrate that inbreeding influences the innate behaviors in D. melanogaster, which in turn may affect the overall biological fitness of the flies.

The antioxidant effects of hedysarum polybotrys polysaccharide in extending lifespan and ameliorating aging-related diseases in Drosophila melanogaster

Hedysarum polybotrys polysaccharide (HPS) is one of the main active ingredients of Hedysarum with many health-beneficial properties, including antioxidant property, immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumor. However, the effect of HPS on anti-aging is still unclear. This study was to explore the protective function of HPS on aging and age-related diseases using Drosophila melanogaster. The results demonstrated that HPS supplementation promoted hatchability and prolonged lifespan by enhancing the antioxidative capacity. Administraction of HPS ameliorated age-related symptoms such as imbalanced intestinal homeostasis, sleep disturbances, and beta-amyloid (Aβ) induced Alzheimer's disease (AD) in flies, but did not modulate neurobehavioral deficits in the AD model of tauopathy and the Parkinson's disease (PD) model of Pink1 mutation. Overall, this study reveals that HPS has strong potential in the prevention of aging and age-related diseases, and provided a new candidate for the development of anti-aging drugs.