Nutritional genomics

The study of the connections between the human genome, human nutrition, and health is the focus of the field of research known as nutritional genomics, which is sometimes referred to as nutrigenomics. People working in this subject are attempting to acquire a knowledge of how the body as a whole reacts to a meal via the use of systems biology as well as the interaction between a single gene and a single food molecule. It wasn't until 2001 that the term "nutritional genomics," sometimes known as "nutrigenomics," was first used to describe the connection between diet and inherited genes.

The study of people who were deficient in certain nutrients and the diseases that resulted from this deficiency was the birth of the modern subject of nutritional science. One example of this would be the illness scurvy, which is caused by a lack of vitamin C. As additional disorders that are strongly connected to food (but not deficiency), such as obesity, grew more widespread, the scope of nutritional science broadened to include these concerns as well. Research on nutrition often focuses on preventive measures, attempting to determine which nutrients or meals will either increase or lessen the risk of illnesses and other types of harm to the human body.

For instance, Prader–Willi syndrome, a condition whose most distinguishing feature is an insatiable appetite, has been definitively linked to an epigenetic pattern in which the paternal copy in the chromosomal region is mistakenly deleted, and the maternal loci is inactivated as a result of excessive methylation. This epigenetic pattern is responsible for the condition. However, despite the fact that certain illnesses may be connected to particular single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or other localised patterns, variation within a population may provide a great deal more polymorphisms than previously thought.