A Paper on the effects of the Growing Old TOgether study on the transcriptomes of blood, subcutaneous adipose tissue and muscle tissue was published by Fatih Bogaards and collaborating researchers from Wageningen and Belgium.

The researchers investigated the effects of a 13-week combined Growing Old TOgether (GOTO) lifestyle intervention on the transcriptomes of blood, subcutaneous adipose tissue and muscle tissue. The transcriptomic effects were related to the metabolic health changes of the intervention and the shared variation between the three transcriptomes was investigated using Joint and Individual Variation Explained.

Results showed that the GOTO intervention had virtually no effect on the blood transcriptome. The subcutaneous adipose tissue showed a significant response with changes in pathways involved in HDL cholesterol and cellular signaling. In muscle, collagen and extracellular matrix pathways were significantly overexpressed. The changes in the subcutaneous adipose tissue transcriptome were significantly associated with the metabolic health changes. A shared variation (joint effect) between the three transcriptomes with two linearly independent patterns was identified; one influenced by subcutaneous adipose tissue and the other by muscle tissue.

By modeling the joint effect in blood we were able to capture part of the intervention effects of the two metabolic tissues, indicating that the joint effect may act as an integrated health marker for metabolic intervention effects across tissues.

Read here the abstract and whole publication.