Symposium 1: Nutrition and Physical Activity Diet, genes and exercise performance

The importance of nutrition, in combination with appropriate training, for successful exercise performance has been recognised for many years. Considerable emphasis has rightly focused on energy, carbohydrate and fluid balance, and nutritional strategies are designed to prevent the well documented ergolytic effects of carbohydrate depletion and dehydration on endurance exercise performance.1 In addition, attention has focused on the role on nutrition in promoting optimal biological adaptations to training, again with an emphasis on carbohydrate and fluid balance, but with emerging interest in the role of protein intake. In recent years, advances in molecular biology techniques have allowed investigation of the effects of exercise and diet on skeletal muscle gene expression and of the importance of the genotype in determining the biological responses to exercise and dietary interventions. It is clear that a number of putative genes have associations with cardiorespiratory endurance, muscle strength and metabolism, specific characteristics of elite athletes and with training adaptability.2 A challenge in the years ahead is to assess the relative importance of the genotype and the environment in determining the final "elite performance phenotype". A relatively simpler task has been examination of the effects of exercise and dietary interventio