In the thesis nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics are described. Nutrigenetics studies how genetic variants among individuals can change their physiological response to food, while nutrigenomics, on the other hand, studies the direct and indirect influence of food components on genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome, thereby on the regulation of gene expression and on the stability of DNA. Food components can act as ligands for transcription factors and are included in many metabolic pathways, which causes changes in the concentrations of substrates and intermediates, involved in the regulation of gene expression. They can also affect signal pathways, posttranslational modifications of proteins and may have a role of coenzymes or other enzyme cofactors.
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