Login / Signup

Intergenerational transmission of the positive effects of physical exercise on brain and cognition.

Kerry R McGreevyPatricia TezanosIria Ferreiro-VillarAnna PalléMarta Moreno-SerranoAnna Esteve-CodinaIsmael Lamas-ToranzoPablo Bermejo-ÁlvarezJulia Fernández-PunzanoAlejandro Martín-MontalvoRaquel MontalbánSacri R FerrónElizabeth J RadfordÁngela Fontán-LozanoJosé Luis Trejo
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2019)
Physical exercise has positive effects on cognition, but very little is known about the inheritance of these effects to sedentary offspring and the mechanisms involved. Here, we use a patrilineal design in mice to test the transmission of effects from the same father (before or after training) and from different fathers to compare sedentary- and runner-father progenies. Behavioral, stereological, and whole-genome sequence analyses reveal that paternal cognition improvement is inherited by the offspring, along with increased adult neurogenesis, greater mitochondrial citrate synthase activity, and modulation of the adult hippocampal gene expression profile. These results demonstrate the inheritance of exercise-induced cognition enhancement through the germline, pointing to paternal physical activity as a direct factor driving offspring's brain physiology and cognitive behavior.
Keyphrases