Fig. 1

Metabolic regulation in the cell after endurance exercise. Endurance exercise increased the production of pyruvate from anaerobic glycolysis to compensate for ATP production. On one hand, pyruvate was converted into lactate. On the other hand, pyruvate entered in the TCA cycle to produce NADH and semiquinone. The OXPHOS of fatty acids increased, while amino acids were deaminated to fuel the TCA cycle during the endurance competition, which increased the production of ammonia. Because glucose levels become too low during endurance exercise, the keto acid oxaloacetate was preferentially utilized in the process of gluconeogenesis, instead of reacting with acetyl CoA, and diverted to ketone body formation (e.g. acetone). In the figure, the node color intensity indicates the associated expression level: red = over-expression at T1 and green = under-expression at T1. G-6-P, glucose 6-phosphate; F-6-P, fructose 6-phosphate; F-1, 6-BP, fructose-1,6- bisphosphate; GSH, reduced glutathione; GSSG, oxidized glutathione; PEP, phosphoenolpyruvate; R-5-P, ribose-5-phosphate. *denotes statistical significance at 0.05 level. Figure adapted from Kruiswijk et al. [62] with permission from Nature publishing group (License number: 3902041297601)