MEMBRANE-ASSOCIATED FATTY-ACID-BINDING PROTEIN (FABPPM) IN HUMAN SKELETAL-MUSCLE IS INCREASED BY ENDURANCE TRAINING

Endurance training increases the capacity for utilization of fatty aci ds. Since fatty acids are believed to enter cells via facilitated diff usion a possible mechanism behind this adaptation to training might be a training-induced increase in membrane content of putative fatty aci d transporters. We investigated whether the expression of the 40 KD me mbrane associated fatty acid binding protein (FABPpm) in skeletal musc le is increased with endurance training in man. The FABPpm was detecta ble in a crude membrane preparation from human skeletal muscle. Three weeks of intense one-legged endurance training increased (p<0.05) the content of FABPpm by 49% whereas in the untrained control muscle no ch ange was observed. In addition, the activity of citrate synthase was i ncreased (p<0.05) by 20% in the trained compared with the untrained mu scle. It is concluded that expression of FABPpm in human skeletal musc le is increased with endurance training consistent with a role of FABP pm as a sarcolemmal fatty acid transporter. (C) 1997 Academic Press.