# A Pediatric Clinical Center for Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity (MoTrPAC): Towards a Molecular Map of Exercise in the Pediatric Origins of Health Across the Lifespan

> **NIH NIH U01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE · 2020 · $35,941

## Abstract

A Pediatric Clinical Center for Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity (MoTrPAC): Towards a
Molecular Map of Exercise in the Pediatric Origins of Health Across the Lifespan
The goals of this research are to: 1) map the molecular mechanisms through which exercise benefits health in
children and adolescents, a critical period of change in the human phenotype, and 2) provide the MoTrPAC
consortium with rigorously collected and reproducible data from exercise studies in children and adolescents.
This proposal is based on exciting discoveries in a range of disciplines, including: 1) new insights into age-
dependent progression of gene expression during growth in children, 2) emerging data highlighting the central
role played by leukocytes (n.b., an accessible tissue in child health research) in transducing exercise into
health benefits, 3) pilot data showing remarkable interaction between the molecular transducers of growth and
the molecular transducers of exercise, and 4) novel approaches to measuring and understanding physiologic
and morphometric responses to acute and chronic exercise in children. In the proposed acute exercise studies,
the immediate physiologic, proteomic, metabolomic, and leukocyte function and transcriptomic response to a
brief exercise-induced perturbation in cellular homeostasis will be measured in a cross section of early- and
late-pubertal boys and girls. In the proposed chronic exercise studies (a 12-week, prospective, aerobic
exercise training intervention), we will compare the magnitude of the biomarker and molecular adaptation to
training, along with the accompanying morphometric and physiologic changes between early- and late-pubertal
girls and boys. The combined data from the acute and chronic exercise studies will be analyzed with systems-
computational techniques to map the networks that transduce physical activity to health in the growing child
and adolescent. Because phenotype is a “moving target” during growth, we will use accurate methodologies
(such as DXA for body composition and breath-by-breath gas exchange for cardiopulmonary exercise testing)
that have proven in our hands to be feasible in large numbers of children and adolescents. Traditional exercise
testing will be complemented by laboratory-based “real-life” exercise protocols, and in all cases, scaled to each
participant’s physical fitness, estimates of habitual physical activity, noninvasive measures of vascular health,
and training volume and mode. In this way, the pediatric and adult data will be readily integrated. As an
academic health center unit devoted uniquely to the study of physical activity and health in children in a very
diverse region, our group is exceptionally qualified to contribute to the MoTrPAC consortium. We 1) published
a series of discoveries of novel genomic and epigenetic exercise biomarkers in circulating leukocytes in both
children and adults, 2) performed thousands of pediatric exercise tests, 3) conducted many successf...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10265121
- **Project number:** 3U01AR071158-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
- **Principal Investigator:** DAN M COOPER
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $35,941
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-12-06 → 2022-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10265121

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10265121, A Pediatric Clinical Center for Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity (MoTrPAC): Towards a Molecular Map of Exercise in the Pediatric Origins of Health Across the Lifespan (3U01AR071158-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10265121. Licensed CC0.

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