ABSTRACT
Food is the primary and fundamental requirement for the survival of all living organisms. Food provides energy, supplies building blocks, and maintains growth of living subjects, including humans. Beyond basic nutrition, food also provides health benefits and protects cellular machinery against deleterious effects of endogenous and exogenous factors that compromise human wellness by exploiting basic mechanisms of cell function. Green tea polyphenols, derived from the fresh leaves of the evergreen shrub Camellia sinensis, are a group of flavonoids commonly known as catechins that have been very useful in maintaining good health since the early history of human beings. However, it has only been recently that modern science has started to explore the benefits of tea polyphenols in protecting against the pathogenesis of oxidative stress, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, inflammation, osteoporosis, aging, and so on. rough epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and laboratory tests, advanced food science has linked the benefit of tea consumption with modulated gene function or protein activity. Nutri-omics is an area of food science that deals with the interaction of food components with genes, proteins, and metabolites. e omics assess profiles of genes, proteins, or metabolites and explore the effects of food components on cells, tissues , or organs. e information obtained from nutrigenomic and proteomic studies can lead to the development of specialized foods and preparation of personalized nutrient guidelines for a person or a group of people to maintain health and prevent disease. ough genomic profiles as evaluated by microarray or mRNA expression analysis have the core components in determining modulated cell function, protein profile analysis may bear the real value linking the true effect of diet on an experimental subject. Due to limitations in protein profile analysis, mainly due to the inadequacy of affordable technology, most nutrigenomic studies focus on gene expression analysis.
