APPLICATION OF CELLULAR MOLECULAR NUTRITION IN PROMOTING CLINICAL & COMMUNITY NUTRITION SERVICES

Nutrition is one of the most important environmental factors for life, but nutritional molecules are affected by many factors. Genes influence the dietary response,while nutrients, can affect gene expression. Modern nutrition research has taken up many elements from molecular biology and next-generation sequencing technologies and turned into nutrigenomics.This new approach attempts to understand the effects of food on multiple molecular levels, by genomics and epigenomics. Nutrigenomics will be understood as the application of various omics technologies for investigations on the level of the epigenome, genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. Nowadays it is possible to apply these methods for a most comprehensive assessment of a human individual, which is summarized as integrative personal omics profile (iPOP). These individual datasets will be the basis for the optimization of personalized nutrition for preserving health via the prevention of disease, such as T2D and CVD.A proof-of-principle investigation demonstrating potential of next generation technologies was provided by the iPOP analysis of one human individual.So different molecular tissue samples, body fluids, epithelia and excretion DNA genome, Methylome, RNA Transcriptome, Microbiome Metagenome, Metabolite Metabolome datasets were complemented by medical lab tests for regular blood biomarkers.Interestingly, the frequent sampling enabled the detection of personalized physiologicalstate changes. The integrative profile monitored both gradual trend changes as well as spike changes in particular at the onset of each physiological state adjustment. Thus, the iPOP analysis allows a most comprehensive view on the biological pathways that changed during diseases onset of the study subject including dynamic changes in allele-specific expressionand RNA editing events. Importantly, the disease incidence was detected in a very early stage, so that it could be effectively controlled and reversed by changing diet andincreased physical exercise of the individual.The central aim of an iPOP-type analysis is the accurate assessment of disease risk of the investigated human individual. Due to the large number of genetic variants and the fact that many diseases are based on the combination of genetic and environmental factors, this aim is challenging. Results from genotyping approaches can be summarized in a riskogram that takes age, gender and ethnicity as well as multiple independent disease-associated SNPs into account, in order to calculate the subject’s likelihood of developing a disease. Future personalized health care as well as the emerging field of personalized nutrition will benefit from the combination of personal genomic information with global monitoring of the molecular profile that represent physiological states, as demonstrated by the iPOP approach. iPOP-type investigations can be tailored and applied to monitor any disease or physiological state changes of interest. The integrative profile is modular and allows the addition of further omics information, such as epigenome-wide data and the microbiome of different organs such as gut, respectively, as well as quantifiable environmental factors. Also different epigenetic mechanisms, such as posttranslational histone modifications and DNA methylation, are process information provided by dietary molecules. Many chromatin-modifying enzymes are susceptible to changes in the levels of intermediary metabolites acting as co-substrates and co-factors and respond to changes in nutrient intake and metabolism.As a conclusion in a few years whole genome sequence information will be available for millions of human individuals. This will allow a deeper understanding of the processes of human development and the causes of patterns of genetic variations for all human populations. The rapid development of omics technologies in combination with decreasing costs will allow collecting iPOP-style large-scale datasets on many individuals, the integration of which will allow further exploring the relationship between human genetic variations and complex diseases and respective traits. Nutrigenomics will support in obtaining a comprehensive insight on the molecular links between nutrition and the (epi)genome. This will allow using diet for preserving health and for an improved personalized therapy, most likely in combination with synthetic drugs, in case of disease.