Nutritional Genomics

This might be the coolest thing ever. Today in my Medical Nutrition Therapy class we had a guess speaker come talk to us about nutritional genomics. What is that you are likely asking. A small part of it deals with how dietary components play a part in gene expressions and activation.

A simple way to think about it would be to compare it to getting a tan. Your skin does not tan unless it is exposed to sunlight. A protein is used to make melanin - the stuff that makes your skin darker when exposed to UV radiation, at a level of darkness determined by your genes. In much the same way genes in your DNA create proteins for other functions in your body... and many of them are affected by what you eat. Tochopherols (vitamin E) play a role in promoting cell death in cancer cells. It does this by activating genes to kill off cancer cells. The coolest thing about this is that it does it only to cancer cells... not healthy cells.

The speaker said that Zinc, when ingested, activates or accelerates the production of mRNA. That means that you can replicate DNA more redily. There are genes that affect obesity, diabetes, cancer, ... just about anything. And of course there are a ton of others. The neat thing is that many of the cofactors in our foods positively affect these genes expressions. I use the term food in the previous sentence in the context of real whole foods, not french fries and diet soda. The chemicals in these false foods actually play detrimental roles in gene expression. Isn't it amazing that God put food on earth that is exactly for us - to benefit us and make us thrive!

Of course there are many other factors other than nutrition that contribute to disease states. But hey, why not do what you can to help yourself - eat what you know you should.

Another thing about our chromosomes, there are 23 pair that hold all of our DNA. This DNA is 'supercoild'. And when they say supercoiled it is coiled up so closely that if one chromosome was stretched out it would extend millions of feet. And if the whole of DNA was strechted out it would extend trillions of feet. Wow, that is in every single cell of our body - in the nucleus. Amazing!