Nutritional genomics

Nutritional genomics, also known as nutrigenomics, is a field of research that focuses on the relationship between human genome, nutrition, and health. It aims to understand how the whole body responds to a food via systems biology, as well as single gene/single food compound relationships.

Overview

Nutritional genomics is a science studying the relationship between human genome, human nutrition and health. Humans ingest a wide range of nutrients and other bioactive molecules from the diet, which can influence health. Nutritional genomics aims to develop rational means to optimise nutrition with respect to an individual's genotype.

History

The field of nutritional genomics was born out of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which was declared complete in April 2003. The project's goal was to identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, and store this information in databases.

Nutrigenetics

Nutrigenetics is a subdiscipline of nutritional genomics and is the study of the effects of genes on nutritional health, such as the predisposition of diseases and conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Nutrigenomics

Nutrigenomics is a subdiscipline of nutritional genomics and is the study of the effects of foods and food constituents on gene expression. This means that nutrigenomics is research focusing on identifying and understanding molecular-level interaction between nutrients and other dietary bioactives with the genome.

See also

• Genomics
• Nutrition
• Human Genome Project
• Nutrigenetics
• Nutrigenomics