DNA methylation links genetics, fetal environment, and an unhealthy lifestyle to the development of type 2 diabetes

Table 1 Summary of some studies that have investigated the impact of physical inactivity and/or activity on DNA methylation in human skeletal muscle and adipose tissue

Intervention	Tissue	Key findings	Reference
9 days of bed rest	Muscle	Increased methylation of PGC1α	[62]. AC Alibegovic et al., American journal of physiology Endocrinology and metabolism 2010;299:E752-763
Acute exercise	Muscle	Response to exercise based on changed methylation of PGC1α	[64]. S Bajpeyi et al., Endocrinology 2017;158:2190-2199
6 months exercise intervention	Muscle	2051 genes (i.e. MEF2A, RUNX1, NDUFC2, and THADA) with decreased and 766 genes with increased methylation	[11]. MD Nitert et al., Diabetes 2012;61:3322-3332
Acute exercise	Muscle	Decreased methylation of PGC1α, PDK4, and PPARδ	[65]. R Barres et al., Cell metabolism 2012;15:405-411
3 months supervised exercise	Muscle	Methylation changes at 4919 sites across the genome in trained leg	[67]. ME Lindholm et al., Epigenetics 2014;9:1557-1569
6 months exercise intervention	Adipose tissue	17,975 individual CpG sites in 7663 unique genes (i.e. HDAC4 and NCOR2) showed altered methylation	[66]. T Ronn et al., PLoS genetics 2013;9:e1003572
16 weeks of either endurance or resistance training	Muscle	Endurance and resistant training induced different epigenetic changes	[68]. DS Rowlands et al., Physiol Genomics 2014;46:747-765

ISSN: 1868-7083