Nutrigenomics

Nutrigenomics is one of the many latest “omics,” a hybrid of research focused on study of the relationships among nutrition and genomics.  A podcast discussing this emerging field can be found here.  The field is concerned with identifying how the bioactive constituents of foods and dietary supplements affect gene expression.  One of the objectives of nutrigenomics is identifying personalized nutritional interventions for improving health and wellness and interventions for addressing specific disease susceptibilities and conditions like diabetes and arthrosclerosis. The intent is to develop individualized nutrigenomic profiles – profiles that cross-correlate genomic, epigenomic and proteomic markers for an individual to the biomolecular actions to specific nutrients.  Realizing this intent will first require much further research to identify important omics markers to identify key constitutional parameters and specific disease susceptibilities.  Second, it will require much further research in ways in which nutrition can be utilized to affect individual epigenomic profiles and specific gene expression sequences.  Research in both of these domains is already proceeding at an accelerating pace.  The dietary suggestions and regimen of dietary supplements in the Anti-Aging Firewalls treatise can be considered to be a zeroth-order approach to nutrigenomics – one that is to some extent based on known omics interactions but that does not take personal omics differences into account. Nutrigenomics based on individual profiles should provide a much higher-resolution approach to looking at the relevance of foods and dietary supplements than is possible on the basis of overall population studies.  In time, nutrigenomics will see the development of diagnostic tests and dietary and other intervention strategies for specific diseases. It will also allow the development of highly personalized diets and supplement regimens for disease prevention and longevity.  I intend to continue tracking and reporting here on those developments.