This study establishes a causal link between the limitation of myofibre transitions and modulation of calcineurin activity, during different exercise paradigms. We have designed a new swimming-based training protocol in order to draw a comparison between a high frequency and amplitude exercise (swimming) and low frequency and amplitude exercise (running). We initially analysed the time course of muscle adaptations to a 6- or 12-week swimming- or running-based training exercise program, on two muscles of the mouse calf, the slow-twitch soleus and the fast-twitch plantaris. The magnitude of exercise-induced muscle plasticity proved to be dependent on both the muscle type and the exercise paradigm. In contrast to the running-based training which generated a continuous increase of the slow phenotype throughout a 12-week training program, swimming induced transitions to a slower phenotype which ended after 6 weeks of training. We then compared the time course of the exercise-induced changes in calcineurin activity during muscle adaptation to training. Both exercises induced an initial activation followed by the inhibition of calcineurin. In the muscles of animals submitted to a 12-week swimming-based training, this inhibition was concomitant with the end of myofibre transition. Calcineurin inhibition was a consequence of the inhibition of its catalytic subunit gene expression on one hand, and of the expression increase of the modulatory calcineurin interacting proteins 1 gene (MCIP1), on the other. The present study provides the first experimental cues for an interpretation of muscle phenotypic variation control.
(c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.