1. Introduction
skeletal muscle plasticity, skeletal muscle acute, PGC-1α
PROLIFERATION
These authors contributed equally to this work.microRNAs (miRs) have been proposed as a promising new class of biomarkers in the context of training adaptation. Using microarray analysis, we studied skeletal muscle miR patterns in sedentary young healthy females (The health benefits of physical activity and exercise are based on multiple morphological, physiological, and biochemical adaptation reactions of the whole body that are interconnected in a complex manner. Moreover, there is a wide range of individual reactions to a particular exercise regimen, and the factors that determine how a specific person reacts to a certain type of training still remain largely enigmatic. Biomarkers might be a useful tool to predict such individual reactions and to develop optimized, ‘individualized’, training regimens (for review, see [microRNAs (miRs) are short noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression at multiple levels [Due to their widespread functions in the regulation of skeletal muscle plasticity, a central role in exercise adaptation has been attributed to myomiRs. Furthermore, various other miRs are known to regulate central aspects of muscle biology, such as cell proliferation and differentiation, protein synthesis and metabolism, which have been implicated in exercise adaptation.However, despite the fact that several studies on circulating miRs and exercise adaptation in different settings have been published [For skeletal muscle adaptation to endurance exercise, mitochondrial biogenesis and function are central. In response to acute endurance exercise, miR-31 and miR-23a have been shown to decline, leading to enhanced levels of PGC-1α in mice [Here, we analyzed skeletal muscle acute responses to a single bout of non-exhaustive cycling exercise in a group of young, healthy, sedentary females. Our aims were (I) to characterize skeletal muscle miR patterns in response to a single bout of exercise, using both a targeted and an untargeted approach, (II) to analyze the potential of miR microarray analysis of a small sample as an untargeted prescreening tool to identify candidate miRs for further testing in larger, ‘targeted’ qPCR studies, and (III) to test whether ‘acute-response’ miR patterns might be promising biomarkers in the context of developing individualized exercise regimens.