Interference of the Human Genome with Nutrients

This chapter will discuss the complex relation between our environment, diet and genome. Genes influence our response to diet, while nutrients, or the lack of them, can affect gene expression. More than 90% of our genes have not changed since the life in the stone ages, where food availability meant survival. In this context, the molecular basis for the recent adaption of our genome to environmental changes, such as less UV-B exposure after migrating north, and dietary opportunities due to dairy farming, such as lactose tolerance, will be discussed. The majority of trait-associated variants of our genome are located outside of protein-coding regions, e.g., often they are regulatory SNPs within transcription factor binding sites. Nutrigenomics has taken up many elements from molecular biology and next-generation sequencing technologies for investigating the effects of food on the level of our epigenome, genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. These methods can be applied for comprehensive assessment of individuals, such as in iPOP (integrated personal omics profile)-style analyses. The respective datasets are the basis for the optimization of personalized nutrition, preserving health via the prevention of nutrition-related diseases.