Sestrin, A Protein That Can Give You The Benefits Of Exercise Without Working Out
Source: Thailand Medical News Jan 13, 2020 4 years, 6 months, 1 week, 6 days, 14 hours, 4 minutes ago
Be it a brisk walk around the park or high-intensity training at the gym, exercise does a body good. But what if you could harness the benefits of a good workout or
exercise without ever moving a
muscle?
Researchers from Michigan University Department Of Medicine are studying a class of naturally occurring proteins called
Sestrin that have been found to mimic many of
exercise’s effects in flies and mice. The findings could eventually help medical scientists combat
muscle wasting due to aging and other causes.
Dr Myungjin Kim said “Researchers have previously observed that
Sestrin accumulates in
muscle following exercise.”Dr Myungjin Kim, Ph.D., a research Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology. Dr Kim, working with Professor Jun Hee Lee, Ph.D. and a team of researchers wanted to know more about the protein’s apparent link to
exercise. Their first step was to encourage a bunch of flies to work out.
Utilizing the advantage of
Drosophila flies’ normal instinct to climb up and out of a test tube, their collaborators Dr Robert Wessells, Ph.D. and Dr Alyson Sujkowski of Wayne State University in Detroit developed a type of fly treadmill. Using it, the team trained the flies for three weeks and compared the running and flying ability of normal flies with that of flies bred to lack the ability to make
Sestrin.
Professor Lee told
Thailand Medical News, “Flies can usually run around four to six hours at this point and the normal flies’ abilities improved over that period. The flies without
Sestrin did not improve with
exercise.”
More significantly, when the researchers overexpressed
Sestrin in the
muscles of normal flies, essentially maxing out their
Sestrin levels, they found those flies had abilities above and beyond the trained flies, even without
exercise. In fact, flies with overexpressed
Sestrin didn’t develop more endurance when
exercised.
The observed beneficial effects of
Sestrin include more than just improved endurance. Mice without
Sestrin lacked the improved aerobic capacity, improved respiration, and fat burning typically associated with
exercise.
Professor Lee added, “We propose that
Sestrin can coordinate these biological activities by turning on or off different metabolic pathways.This kind of combined effect is important for producing
exercise’s effects.”
Professor Lee also helped another collaborator, Dr Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, Ph.D., of Pompeu Fa
bra University in Spain, to demonstrate that
muscle-specific
Sestrin can also help prevent atrophy in a
muscle that’s immobilized, such as the type that occurs when a limb is in a cast for a long period of time. “This independent study again highlights that
Sestrin alone is sufficient to produce many benefits of physical movement and exercise,” says Professor Lee.
The question as to whether
Sestrin supplements could be on the horizon is answered by Professor Lee who said, “
Sestrins are not small molecules, but we are working to find small molecule modulators of
Sestrin.”
Furthermore, adds Dr Kim, “Scientists still don’t know how
exercise produces
Sestrin in the body. This is very critical for future study and could lead to a treatment for people who cannot
exercise.”
Reference: Kim, M., Sujkowski, A., Namkoong, S. et al. Sestrins are evolutionarily conserved mediators of exercise benefits. Nat Commun 11, 190 (2020) doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13442-5
