Super athletic mice are fit because their muscles burn more sugar

Muscle performance and fitness are partly determined by how well your muscle cells use sugar as a fuel source. In turn, exercising improves the muscle's ability to take up sugars from the bloodstream and burn them for energy. On the flip side, conditions that reduce physical activity -- such as obesity or chronic disease -- reduce the muscle's capacity to burn sugar. A new study by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) unravels a mechanism that re-programs metabolic genes in muscles in a way that increases their capacity to use sugar. When activated in mice, this metabolic re-programming dramatically improves exercise performance.

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