Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics: the 'omics' revolution in nutritional science

The execution of the Human Genome Project has brought forth a wealth of information about the structure of the genome, which can now be used to study how the interplay between our genes and factors from the environment such as nutrition relate to a state of health or disease. To enable such studies, novel technologies have been designed in particular to monitor the activity of multiple genes simultaneously at the level of the RNA by transcriptomics, or the level of the proteins by proteomics. In addition, genome information has boosted approaches to study the role of genetic variation to explain individual differences in responses to nutrition, underlying in part the susceptibility for nutrition-related disorders. These new areas of science referred to as 'nutrigenomics' and 'nutrigenetics' respectively, will increase our fundamental knowledge of the interaction between life processes and our diet or specific components thereof, which may in time lead to the development of novel functional foods to improve the health status of the general population, and to the personalized diet to prevent the onset of nutrition-related disorders in genetically predisposed individuals.