Your result, the one DNA position behind it, and what the research says.
6/10 confidence.
PGC-1alpha is the co-ordinator that tells a muscle cell to build more mitochondria. Endurance training works largely by switching it on repeatedly, which is why trained muscle is denser in mitochondria than untrained muscle. This variant swaps one building block of that co-ordinator, and studies that count genotypes in athletes report a modest association with athlete status. Training itself moves endurance far more than this position does; what a variant like this can shift is the slope, not the destination.
Good to know: Endurance training works largely by switching this co-ordinator on repeatedly. Reported effects are small next to training history. This shifts a starting point rather than a ceiling.
Fun fact: Trained endurance muscle can carry roughly twice the mitochondrial density of untrained muscle, built by exactly this pathway.
Discovery: The Gly482Ser change was linked to aerobic capacity and training response in athlete studies from the early 2000s.
The single variant behind this trait
Gene: PPARGC1A
Location: Chr 4:23,814,039
dbSNP rs8192678
Content updated September 2026.
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