Program Snapshot

The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) aims to uncover, at the molecular level, how exercise improves and maintains the health of the body’s tissues and organs. Tracking exercise’s impact on biological molecules through time will help MoTrPAC researchers create a map of molecular changes in the body. Studies in three human tissues will be complemented by more extensive studies in an animal model, allowing many additional tissue types to be explored and substantially increasing the impact of the consortium. Researchers will use the molecular map to better understand how exercise affects people of different ages, sexes, body compositions, and fitness levels. In the future, it may also enable clinicians to make more specific exercise recommendations to patients when using exercise as an intervention to improve health.

When the MoTrPAC study is completed, it will be the largest research study examining the link between exercise and its improvement of human health. To gather the considerable amount of data needed to develop a molecular map of exercise-related changes in the body, MoTrPAC researchers are:

  • recruiting a diverse group of adult and child participants to study at Clinical Sites (CS),
  • performing rodent exercise studies at Preclinical Animal Study Sites (PASS),
  • identifying exercise-influenced biological molecules at Chemical Analysis Sites (CAS),
  • integrating all collected data at the Bioinformatics Center (BIC),
  • coordinating these many efforts, including storing and sharing samples, through the Consortium Coordinating Center (CCC).

The MoTrPAC program issued its first awards in December of 2016. During the first years of the program, the consortium developed the studies’ methods and other logistics. This included the establishment of clinical standards, data standards, animal study protocols, a data portal for researchers, and community outreach and recruitment materials and strategies. To date, the program has performed the full suite of planned animal studies and collected tissues for analysis. MoTrPAC clinical sites are currently recruiting both highly active and untrained participants. Please visit the consortium’s website for the latest news and updates regarding the study, or the data hub to access available data.

An audio-described version of this video is also available.

 

This page last reviewed on March 24, 2023