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Foreword from the editors
FOREWORD FROM THE EDITORS
What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others. Lucretius (c. 99 –55
BC)
Lucretius’s statement affirms a long-held belief that there are individual differences in the response to ingested nutrients. These differences may have a basis in biological inheritance. If we can come to understand the origin of these differences, we may be able to not only better direct individuals to tailored nutrition recommendations but also enhance our understanding of the basic pathways through which particular nutrients achieve their effects. It is estimated that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 000 genes in the human genome.1 It is further estimated that there are well over five single nucleotide polymorphisms per 10 kb of the human genome.2 Given a human genome of approximately 3 billion base pairs, this translates to well over 1.5 million single nucleotide polymorphisms. These genes are expressed as mRNA that can vary in abundance and subsequently be translated into proteins that can take on multiple forms. This massive genomic-transcriptomic-proteomic dimensionality then collides with the dimensionality of nutrition. A typical food frequency questionnaire will have more than 100 distinct items. It is estimated that there are more than a quarter of a million plant species,3 approximately 80 000 of which are thought to be edible.4 At the molecular level, any one food source may contain thousands of individual compounds. This matrix of many thousands of foods and ingestible nutrients by many thousands of genes, genetic polymorphisms, and gene products is the playing field of nutrigenomics. As a field, we have just begun to explore this and must acknowledge that we have a combinatorial tiger by the tail. In this special issue, we have invited some scientists who have been brave enough to venture into this arena. As is illustrated herein, success in this line of research is critically dependent on sophisticated use of a variety of rapidly evolving molecular and statistical technologies coupled with sound sense of and respect for basic biology. In our own work, we find that this combination of expertise is critical, and this recognition has brought the three of us together in close collaboration. We thank the authors for their contributions and hope readers enjoy consuming the contents as much as we enjoyed preparing them.
Nutrition 20:1, 2004 ©Elsevier Inc., 2004. Printed in the United States. All rights reserved.
David B. Allison, PhD Department of Biostatistics Section on Statistical Genetics Clinical Nutrition Research Center The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA Stephen Barnes, PhD UAB Center for Nutrient-Gene Interaction in Cancer Prevention Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics Purdue-UAB Botanical Center for Age-Related Disease The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA W. Timothy Garvey, MD Birmingham VA Medical Center Department of Nutrition Sciences The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA REFERENCES 1. Pennisi E. Bioinformatics. Gene counters struggle to get the right answer. Science 2003;301(5636):1040 2. Zhao Z, Fu YX, Hewett-Emmett D, Boerwinkle E. Investigating single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) density in the human genome and its implications for molecular evolution. Gene 2003;312:207 3. Available from Oregon State University Department of Nutrition and Food Management: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/nfm236/plants/index.cfm. Accessed October 19, 2003 4. Available from The National Park Service Biological Diversity: http:// www.nature.nps.gov/wv/biodiv.htm. Accessed October 19, 2003
doi:10.1016/j.nut.2003.10.018
0899-9007/04/$30.00
What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others. Lucretius (c. 99 –55
BC)
Lucretius’s statement affirms a long-held belief that there are individual differences in the response to ingested nutrients. These differences may have a basis in biological inheritance. If we can come to understand the origin of these differences, we may be able to not only better direct individuals to tailored nutrition recommendations but also enhance our understanding of the basic pathways through which particular nutrients achieve their effects. It is estimated that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 000 genes in the human genome.1 It is further estimated that there are well over five single nucleotide polymorphisms per 10 kb of the human genome.2 Given a human genome of approximately 3 billion base pairs, this translates to well over 1.5 million single nucleotide polymorphisms. These genes are expressed as mRNA that can vary in abundance and subsequently be translated into proteins that can take on multiple forms. This massive genomic-transcriptomic-proteomic dimensionality then collides with the dimensionality of nutrition. A typical food frequency questionnaire will have more than 100 distinct items. It is estimated that there are more than a quarter of a million plant species,3 approximately 80 000 of which are thought to be edible.4 At the molecular level, any one food source may contain thousands of individual compounds. This matrix of many thousands of foods and ingestible nutrients by many thousands of genes, genetic polymorphisms, and gene products is the playing field of nutrigenomics. As a field, we have just begun to explore this and must acknowledge that we have a combinatorial tiger by the tail. In this special issue, we have invited some scientists who have been brave enough to venture into this arena. As is illustrated herein, success in this line of research is critically dependent on sophisticated use of a variety of rapidly evolving molecular and statistical technologies coupled with sound sense of and respect for basic biology. In our own work, we find that this combination of expertise is critical, and this recognition has brought the three of us together in close collaboration. We thank the authors for their contributions and hope readers enjoy consuming the contents as much as we enjoyed preparing them.
Nutrition 20:1, 2004 ©Elsevier Inc., 2004. Printed in the United States. All rights reserved.
David B. Allison, PhD Department of Biostatistics Section on Statistical Genetics Clinical Nutrition Research Center The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA Stephen Barnes, PhD UAB Center for Nutrient-Gene Interaction in Cancer Prevention Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics Purdue-UAB Botanical Center for Age-Related Disease The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA W. Timothy Garvey, MD Birmingham VA Medical Center Department of Nutrition Sciences The University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, Alabama, USA REFERENCES 1. Pennisi E. Bioinformatics. Gene counters struggle to get the right answer. Science 2003;301(5636):1040 2. Zhao Z, Fu YX, Hewett-Emmett D, Boerwinkle E. Investigating single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) density in the human genome and its implications for molecular evolution. Gene 2003;312:207 3. Available from Oregon State University Department of Nutrition and Food Management: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/nfm236/plants/index.cfm. Accessed October 19, 2003 4. Available from The National Park Service Biological Diversity: http:// www.nature.nps.gov/wv/biodiv.htm. Accessed October 19, 2003
doi:10.1016/j.nut.2003.10.018
0899-9007/04/$30.00