Research mission statement

Our mission is to discover new molecular mechanisms in relation to skeletal muscle and exercise. Our research field is molecular exercise physiology.
The main research focus of the Exercise Biology Team is to discover new mechanisms by which exercise improves our fitness, health and disease. We also aim to explain the large variation of human exercise capacity and to study the relationship between exercise and ageing. In our research, we aim for new, important and practically relevant discoveries and conceptual advances. Thus, our interdisciplinary team of sports scientists and biologists is working on different research topics.

1. Do Hippo proteins regulate adaptations to exercise in skeletal muscle? What is the function of Hippo proteins in skeletal muscle?
2. What are the physiological extremes of the human metabolome? What is the exercise metabolome (i.e. what blood metabolites change their concentration with exercise)?
3. What is the interrelationship between metabolism and skeletal muscle adaptation?
4. What genes regulate skeletal muscle weight, fibre numbers, size, types, endurance, strength or cause muscle disease?
5. By what mechanisms does exercise affect the proliferation and survival of cancer cells especially in paediatric cancers such as rhabdomyosarcoma? Can we use exercise and diet to increase the effectiveness of drugs?
6. Why do our muscles age (defined as sarcopenia) and what can we do about it?