We often hear that our genes set the blueprint for our health. But new research from the National University of Singapore shows that diet and exercise can help rewrite the script, at least when it comes to metabolic disease risk.
In a study published in Cell Genomics, researchers followed 54 overweight or obese East Asian adults who completed a 16-week program combining supervised exercise and dietary changes. Participants lost an average of 10% of their body weight and improved their insulin-stimulated glucose uptake by about 30%, a sign of better blood sugar control.
But the changes went deeper than the scale. Using muscle biopsies collected before and after the program, the team found that lifestyle changes altered the expression of more than 500 genes, especially those tied to mitochondria and insulin signaling. They also identified hundreds of gene regulatory variants, some unique to East Asian ancestry, that responded to the intervention.
“By understanding the interaction between lifestyle and gene regulation, we hope to guide the development of more effective therapies tailored to an individual’s unique genetic background,” said assistant professor Boxiang Liu of the NUS Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, one of the study’s lead authors.
Interestingly, when researchers compared their findings with genetic studies of metabolic traits, they discovered 16 genes linked to obesity and diabetes risk that appeared to respond positively to lifestyle changes. In other words, diet and exercise seemed to lessen the effects of certain high-risk genes.
The study underscores the potential of gene-lifestyle interactions: how the right changes in diet and movement can influence how your genes behave, even if you have a higher inherited risk for metabolic conditions.
Next, researchers plan to expand the study to include more participants across different Asian populations and apply advanced techniques to better understand how different types of muscle cells respond to lifestyle changes.
This research was supported by the Ministry of Education (Singapore), the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, and the Precision Medicine Translational Research Program.