Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Perspectives in Nutrigenomics for human health

Poonam C. Mittal, Biochemistry Department, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India.“Nutrition has often been the subject of conjectures and ingenious hypotheses—but our actualknowledge is so insufficient that their only use is to try to satisfy our imagination. If we couldarrive at some more exact facts they could well have applications in medicine.”Lavoisier (1743-1794).

Abstract:

The main concern of the science of human nutrition has been development of adietary regime that promotes optimum health for most of the population. However, asdata linking diet and disease accumulated, the response to dietary factors was found to beindividualistic. The same dietary factors were found to produce disease in a person whohad a genetic predisposition to that particular disease, but not in those, who seeminglyhad a more efficient metabolic machinery to handle the nutrient in question. This led tothe discovery that nutrients can influence metabolic pathways through nutrient-geneinteractions, and thereby influence homeostasis. As information from the human genome became available, rapid developments took place in this newly emerging science of Nutrigenomics.The study of nutrigenomics focuses on understanding the relationship betweennutrition, genetics and health. This requires application of genomics, transcriptomics andmetabolomics, which respectively help in understanding how dietary signals influencegene expression, protein expression and metabolite production. The final outcome is a pattern of these effects, which have been called the dietary signature of the metabolic process.This review will discuss the significance of studying these dietary signatures at thelevel of the cell, the tissue and the organism as a whole. The use of genomic tools innutrition research, which can conduct millions of genetic screening tests, will beexplained and the modes by which nutrients affect the genome, proteome andmetabolome will be discussed.

Nutrigenomics has attracted media attention as the technology to prescribe tailoreddietary regimens specific to an individual’s genetic requirements. This is a distinct possibility, as rapid strides have been made is the application of nutrigenomics for disease management. A brief overview of these issues and what they mean for humanhealth will be provided in the present review.

NTRODUCTION

The role of nutrition in human health: historical perspective

The earliest records linking the importance of specific substances in food to life can be traced to scholars such as Hippocrates and Charaka, who lived more than 2400 yrs back, even though, at that time, there was no knowledge of the chemical nature of foods.The beginnings of modern concepts of food chemistry can be traced to the mid-1700s,less than three centuries back, when Lavoisier discovered that oxidation of carbon is thesource of food energy. Chemical methods of analysis developed rapidly during the‘chemical revolution’ in France at the end of the eighteenth century and became theimpetus for developments in food analysis and investigations linking consequences of consuming various foods for human health and nutrition. Magendie and Liebig ledresearch through the 19

century to characterize macronutrients such as carbohydrates,fat and protein. This was followed by characterization of more complex molecules suchas the vitamins, which are present in foods in smaller amounts, and required moresophisticated techniques for determination.Developments in nutritional sciences were also guided by observations linking poor diets to diseases such as scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, marasmus, anemia, night blindness etc. Since war, famine and drought were common, the study of the science of Human Nutrition concerned itself with the development of a dietary regime that promoted optimum health for the entire population. The first recommended dietaryallowances (RDA) were developed during World War II by the United States NationalAcademy of Sciences (US-NAS) to provide populations with the knowhow to eat right.Thereafter, many countries of the world developed their own RDA, based on dataobtained on local populations.Throughout most of the twentieth century, the focus of research in nutritional sciencewas mainly on preventing undernutrition for the entire population. There was nodistinction between individual requirements: the approach was to treat everyone asgenetically identical.