Nutrigenetics & Nutrigenomics

NUTRIGENETICS & NUTRIGENOMICS

Nutrition is the intake and use of the nutrients that the body needs in order to grow, to develop, to protect and to improve our bodies and to improve the life quality. Foraging, food consumption and the use of nutrients in biological processes are important aspects of the relationship between an organism's body and it’s environment. The ratio between the energy intake and the energy consumption has important adaptive consequences in terms of survival, development and reproduction.

In our era, due to the long life expectancy, personalized health-oriented services have been started to come to the fore instead of illness. With the latest technologies and ascending scientific researches focused on the human genome, lifestyle and environmental factors, the relationship between nutrition and genes have increased considerably. The importance of nutrigenetic practices has increased with the developments in genetics which aims the prevention of chronic diseases and the healthy aging process on the health of the society and individuals. 

Physiological status, social status, physical and economic environment play a crucial role in the selection of dietary components in order to maintain a healthy life style. While certain reference nutritional values may be appropriate for one individual, it may cause nutritional deficiencies for another individual and vice versa. It has been known for a long time that the body response of different individuals may differ with to the same diet style. Except for congenital metabolic disorders, the role of genetic factors in this response and dieatary change is a new concept in health. 

Today's nutrition science aims to improve the health status of individuals through dietary concepts which leads to improve the the health of the society and preventation of the diseases. Studies that examine how are the effects of diet and nutrients to the human health and body in genetics is based on two fields; Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics. 

What is Nutrigenomics?

Nutrigenomics is a new science that studies the effects of nutrients and dietary patterns on genome and gene expression. Nutrigenomics explains how our DNA and genetic code influence our need for nutrients and their amounts and helps maintain optimum health throughout life. It examines how nutrients can affect the activity of genes, including those involved in metabolism, inflammation and disease risk.

Nutrigenomics seeks to identify how dietary factors can alter gene expression and function in order to develop personalized dietary recommendations based on an individual's genetic profile. It establishes diet-gene interaction and explains the beneficial or harmful effects of diet on health.

It aims to identify genes that influence diet-related disease risk and to help unravel the mechanisms underlying these genetic predispositions.

Determining the personalized diet based on genetic structure is useful in clarifying the etiological perspectives of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, obesity and cardiovascular diseases.

What is Nutrigenetics?

Nutrigenetics, on the other hand, is the science that studies the effects of genetic differences on the nutrition-disease relationship. Nutrigenetics, nutrients; focuses on the genome, proteome and metabolome, and examines the impact of genetic variation on the interaction between diet and disease or nutritional recommendations.

Nutrigenetics is the study of how an individual's genetic makeup affects their responses to different foods and dietary patterns. It studies how genetic variations can affect the absorption, metabolism, and use of nutrients in the body. Nutrigenetics seeks to identify specific genetic variations that may affect an individual's risk of developing diet-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. It includes researching the responses of individual diets based on individual differences at the genetic level.

These individual differences may not be at the gene level that can be at the level of single nucleotide polymorphism,. It helps to clarify the different responses of individuals to the same nutrient.

Although genomic analyzes reveal that 99% of people are same at the DNA level, single nucleotide polymorphisms seen in the remaining 1% are responsible for all morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular differences between individuals. 

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in human populations alter dietary metabolic responses and have a risk effect on disease onset.

Single Nucleotide polymorphism analysis provides a powerful tool to investigate the role of nutrition in disease and health status at the molecular stage, and its consideration in metabolic and epidemiological studies contributes to the identification of optimal diets.

Relationships between diseases (Cancer, Obesity, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases, Neural Tube Defects, Leukemia, Down syndrome, Spina bifida) are evaluated by looking at the single nucleotide polymorphisms of individuals. For example, MTHFR polymorphisms, APO-B, APO-E, ACE, VDR genes are important in these diseases.

In our center, we are serving wide range of tests as well as the blood tests recommended by dietitians, genetic tests are analyzed by looking at single nucleotide polymorphisms with appropriate genetic counseling services and clinical examination where after the individuals are directed to dietitians to take a suitable diet for their health. 

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