ABSTRACT
Conceptually, modern nutrition involves not just providing optimal nutrients for nourishment and improving health but, in addition, understanding the mechanisms, protection, and identišcation of the biologically active molecules and their demonstrated efšcacy (Kussman and Affolte, 2006). A growing number of studies have demonstrated that nutrients and other bioactive compounds in food can regulate gene expression in many ways (Mead, 2007; García-Cañas, 2010). This emerging science, termed nutrigenomics, aims to describe nutrients in one of their biological roles, that is, as signaling molecules that are recognized by cellular sensing mechanisms and result in translation of these dietary signals into changes in gene, protein, and metabolite expression (Afman and Müller, 2006). One of the principal roles of nutrigenomics research is to identify the genes that in·uence the risk of diet-related diseases on a genome-wide scale and to understand the mechanisms that underlie these genetic predispositions (Müller & Kersten, 2003; Kolehmainen et al., 2005). These disorders are complex and multifactorial in their origin, involving not only genetic factors but also a number of behavioral and environmental factors such as exposure to certain food components (Ordóvas, 2007; García-Cañas, 2010). Nutrigenomics constitute a well-integrated analytical approach including the latest developments in high-throughput omics techniques such as genomics, genotyping, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, as bioinformatics for the comprehensive study of different aspects of this biological complexity, which is also referred to as systems biology (van Ommen and Stierum, 2002; García-Cañas, 2010).
