Making Muscle or Mitochondria by Selective Splicing of PGC-1α

Endurance training induces the transcriptional coactivator PGC-1α in skeletal muscle, promoting mitochondrial biogenesis and skeletal muscle remodeling. In a recent issue of Cell, Ruas et al. (2012) show that resistance training regulates the splicing of a novel isoform of PGC-1α (PGC-1α4), which is sufficient to stimulate skeletal muscle hypertrophy