The Department of Sports and Health Tourism, Sports Physiology, and Medicine of the Faculty of Physical Education has had its anniversary celebration - 10 years from its founding. The staff of the department made a good gift for the anniversary: they published three articles in Q1 journals in the areas of medicine, biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology.
2019 was a very busy year for the department: the team carried out two projects with the support of the Russian Science Foundation. The first is devoted to the study of myokines - special proteins that are produced by muscles during physical exercise (the project manager is Professor Leonid Kapilevich, head of the department). In the second project, the effect of physical exertion on the compensation of type 2 diabetes mellitus was studied (the project manager is Professor Alexander Chibalin, a staff member of TSU and Karolinska Institute, Sweden). This resulted in 15 scientific articles in journals included in the international databases Web of Science and Scopus, including three articles in journals from the first quartile.
The article “Transcriptomic Changes Triggered by Ouabain in Rat Cerebellum Granule Cells: Role of α3- And α1-Na +, K + -ATPase-mediated Signaling” was published in PLoS ONE (the USA journal, impact factor 6.26, 27th of 2,836 journals in the category "Medicine - Myology"). In this work, the role of monovalent ions (sodium and potassium) as regulators of intracellular processes was studied.
- This is a fundamentally new approach, - explains Leonid Kapilevich. - Traditionally, calcium is considered the main ion that is the regulator of cellular metabolism, especially in muscles. However, the team showed that it is the ratio of sodium and potassium in the cell that is able to regulate the process of gene transcription, moreover, regardless of calcium.
The article “Elevation of Intracellular Na + Contributes to Expression of Early Response Genes Triggered by Endothelial Cell Shrinkage” was published in the journal Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry (published in Sweden, impact factor 5.11, 51st of 2,124 journals in "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology "). This article continues the research whose results are described in the previous article. Here, an attempt is made to understand how sodium ions affect the metabolic processes in the cell. It was found that one of the most likely ways is by changing the osmotic pressure of the cytoplasm and, as a consequence, the volume of the cell and its components.
The article “Low AS160 and High SGK Basal Phosphorylation Associates with Impaired Incretin Profile and Type 2 Diabetes in Adipose Tissue of Obese Patients” was published in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice (published in the Netherlands, impact factor 3.26, 26th of 133 journals in “Internal Medicine”). The study examined molecular changes in adipose tissue in patients with diabetes, which contribute to impaired glucose metabolism and can serve as a target for the therapeutic effect of exercise.
- The tenth anniversary against the background of the centennials of other departments and faculties looks, of course, modest, but even for this short period the department has something to be proud of, - says Leonid Kapilevich. - During this time, two doctoral and nine master's theses were defended at the department, 15 student manuals were published, 115 articles were published in journals included in international databases, five monographs, and two grants from the Russian Science Foundation were won.