The case for strategic international alliances to harness nutritional genomics for public and personal health

Abstract

Nutrigenomics is the study of how constituents of the diet interact with genes, and their products, to alter phenotype and, conversely, how genes and their products metabolise these constituents into nutrients, antinutrients, and bioactive compounds. Results from molecular and genetic epidemiological studies indicate that dietary unbalance can alter gene-nutrient interactions in ways that increase the risk of developing chronic disease. The interplay of human genetic variation and environmental factors will make identifying causative genes and nutrients a formidable, but not intractable, challenge. We provide specific recommendations for how to best meet this challenge and discuss the need for new methodologies and the use of comprehensive analyses of nutrient -genotype interactions involving large and diverse populations. The objective of the present paper is to stimulate discourse and collaboration among nutrigenomic researchers and stakeholders, a process that will lead to an increase in global health and wellness by reducing health disparities in developed and developing countries.

Personalised nutrition: ready for practice?

“…In order to disentangle this complexity we need a more detailed understanding of how genotype interacts with dietary bioactives to produce a phenotype (16) , supported by significant research investment in whole genome sequencing and bioinformatic initiatives. In addition, it will require the development of large interdisciplinary research consortia and a move to much larger human intervention studies, albeit that this may result in less accurate dietary information in order to enhance workability (17) .…”

Harnessing Nutrigenomics: Development of web-based communication, databases, resources, and tools

“…More recently, members of the epidemiology community (Ioannidis et al, 2006) have announced a "network of investigator networks" for improving human genetic research for sharing best practices, tools, and methods for analyses of associations between genetic variation and common diseases (http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/hugenet/ default.htm). We and others (Kaput, 2004;Kaput et al, 2005;Ordovas and Corella, 2004) added that (i) chronic disease may result from multiple molecular pathways that may obscure gene -disease or gene -nutrient -phenotype association analyses, (ii) the physiological response to the presence of a disease may alter expression of genetic information, (iii) genotype X environment interactions are rarely taken into account in nutritional or genetic epidemiological experiments, and these interactions are known to affect the expression of genetic information in response to different environments, (iv) ancestral background should be included because of epistasis (interaction of genes that are not alleles, especially the suppression of the effect of one gene by another), and (iv) laboratory animals and cultured cells may not account for genetic or nutritional variations found in humans.…”

“…diet) must be included in experimental designs for epidemiology, laboratory animal, cell culture, and drug studies for this toolset to be of value. Recognizing and acknowledging the limitations of current research designs and strategies, 88 scientists from 22 countries called for strategic international alliances to harness nutrigenomic research for personal and public health (Kaput et al, 2005). The goals outlined were to (i) create a federation for sharing data from cell culture experiments, laboratory animal studies, and in particular human nutritional intervention and cohort (prospective and retrospective) studies, (ii) develop more highly powered human studies, (iii) improve analyses and consistency of phenotypes, (iv) develop better measurements of food intake, (v) introduce controls for population stratification, (vi) analyze a wider array of genetic makeup by recruiting individuals from different ethnic groups, (vii) include other environmental variables that alter expression of genetic information, and (viii) promote interactions between academia and industry to convert knowledge for the public good.…”

“…NuGO has created a website environment that fosters communication among institutes, laboratories, and individuals. Many of the goals and plans for nurturing strategic collaborations within NuGO are similar to those of the International nutrigenomic community (see (Kaput et al, 2005). NuGO has offered and already provides the resources and infrastructure to host the international nutrigenomics website, which will eliminate the need to find and justify funding from other countries and programs for the initial years of development of this knowledge structure.…”

Human nutrition, environment, and health

“…The limitations of 20th century nutrition research were recognized and publicized in the early 2000s (Kaput et al 2005). The decade of nutrition research since has seen the development and use of high-throughput phenotyping methods, improved study designs, and the integration of genomic data.…”