Topic of the Month
Micronutrients and the human genome
1 September 2011
Nutritional genomics is a science that studies the relationship between the human genome, nutrition and health. It can be divided into ‘nutrigenomics’, which investigates the effect of nutrients on health through altering gene expression, and ‘nutrigenetics’, analyzing genetic variations (polymor-phisms) among individuals with respect to the interaction between nutrients and disease. It is becoming increasingly evident that the risk for developing degenerative diseases increases with more DNA damage, which in turn is dependent on micronutrient status.