Genes and Nutrition最新文献

Background: Breastfeeding affects the growth and development of infants, and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) play a crucial role in this process. To explore the factors influencing the PUFA concentration in breast milk, we conducted research on two aspects: dietary fatty acid patterns and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in maternal fatty acid desaturase genes.

Methods: Three hundred seventy Chinese Han lactating mothers were recruited. A dietary semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was used to investigate the dietary intake of lactating mothers from 22 to 25 days postpartum for 1 year. Meanwhile, breast milk samples were collected from the participants and tested for the concentrations of 8 PUFAs and 10 SNP genotypes. We sought to determine the effect of dietary PUFA patterns and SNPs on breast milk PUFAs. We used SPSS 24.0 statistical software for data analysis. Statistical tests were all bilateral tests, with P < 0.05 as statistically significant.

Results: Under the same dietary background, PUFA contents in breast milk expressed by most major allele homozygote mothers tended to be higher than that expressed by their counterparts who carried minor allele genes. Moreover, under the same gene background, PUFA contents in breast milk expressed by the mother's intake of essential PUFA pattern tended to be higher than that expressed by their counterparts who took the other two kinds of dietary.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that different genotypes and dietary PUFA patterns affect PUFA levels in breast milk. We recommend that lactating mothers consume enough essential fatty acids to ensure that their infants ingest sufficient PUFAs.

Background: Metabolic flexibility is the ability of an organism to switch between substrates for energy metabolism, in response to the changing nutritional state and needs of the organism. On the cellular level, metabolic flexibility revolves around the tricarboxylic acid cycle by switching acetyl coenzyme A production from glucose to fatty acids and vice versa. In this study, we modelled cellular metabolic flexibility by constructing a logical model connecting glycolysis, fatty acid oxidation, fatty acid synthesis and the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and then using network analysis to study the behaviours of the model.

Results: We observed that the substrate switching usually occurs through the inhibition of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC) by pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDK), which moves the metabolism from glycolysis to fatty acid oxidation. Furthermore, we were able to verify four different regulatory models of PDK to contain known biological observations, leading to the biological plausibility of all four models across different cells and conditions.

Conclusion: These results suggest that the cellular metabolic flexibility depends upon the PDC-PDK regulatory interaction as a key regulatory switch for changing metabolic substrates.

Decline of cellular functions especially cognitive is a major deficit that arises with age in humans. Harnessing the strengths of small and genetic tractable model systems has revealed key conserved regulatory biochemical and signaling pathways that control aging. Here, we review some of the key signaling and biochemical pathways that coordinate aging processes with special emphasis on Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system and discuss how nutrients and metabolites can regulate lifespan by coordinating signaling and epigenetic programs. We focus on central nutrient-sensing pathways such as mTOR and insulin/insulin-like growth factor signaling and key transcription factors including the conserved basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor HLH-30/TFEB.

Seaweeds are marine macroalgae, some of which are edible. They are rich in specific dietary fibers and also contain other characteristic biological constituents. Biological activities have been investigated mainly in animal studies, while very few results are available from human studies. Biomarkers of food intake (BFIs) specific to seaweed could play an important role as objective measurements in observational studies and dietary intervention studies. Thus, the health effects of seaweeds can be explored and understood by discovering and applying BFIs. This review summarizes studies to identify candidate BFIs of seaweed intake. These BFIs are evaluated by a structured validation scheme. Hydroxytrifuhalol A, 7-hydroxyeckol, C-O-C dimer of phloroglucinol, diphloroethol, fucophloroethol, dioxinodehydroeckol, and/or their glucuronides or sulfate esters which all belong to the phlorotannins are considered candidate biomarkers for brown seaweed. Fucoxanthinol, the main metabolite of fucoxanthin, is also regarded as a candidate biomarker for brown seaweed. Further validation will be needed due to the very limited number of human studies. Further studies are also needed to identify additional candidate biomarkers, relevant specifically for the red and green seaweeds, for which no candidate biomarkers emerged from the literature search. Reliable BFIs should also ideally be found for the whole seaweed food group.

Background: High protein intake may promote angiogenesis giving support to the development of metastasis according to the experimental data. However, nutritional epidemiologic evidence is inconsistent with metastasis. Therefore, we aimed to study the association between dietary intake of protein and tumoral expression levels of Ras homologous gene family member A (RhoA), vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A), and VEGF receptor-2 (VEGFR2) in primary breast cancer (BC) patients.

Methods: Over this consecutive case series, 177 women primary diagnosed with histopathologically confirmed BC in Tabriz (Iran) were enrolled between May 2011 and November 2016. A validated food frequency questionnaire was completed for eligible participants. Fold change in gene expression was measured using quantitative real-time PCR. Principal component factor analysis (PCA) was used to express dietary groups of proteins.

Results: Total protein intake was associated with the expression level of VEGF-A in progesterone receptor-positive (PR+: β = 0.296, p < 0.01) and VEGFR2 in patients with involvement of axillary lymph node metastasis (ALNM+: β = 0.295, p < 0.01) when covariates were adjusted. High animal protein intake was correlated with overexpression of RhoA in tumors with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+: β = 0.230, p < 0.05), ALNM+ (β = 0.238, p < 0.05), and vascular invasion (VI+: β = 0.313, p < 0.01). Animal protein intake was correlated with the overexpression of VEGFR2 when tumors were positive for hormonal receptors (ER+: β = 0.299, p < 0.01; PR+: β = 0.296, p < 0.01). Based on the PCA outputs, protein provided by whole meat (white and red meat) was associated inversely with RhoA expression in ALNM+ (β = - 0.253, p < 0.05) and premenopausal women (β = - 0.285, p < 0.01) in adjusted models. Whole meat was correlated with VEGFR2 overexpression in VI+ (β = 0.288, p < 0.05) and premenopausal status (β = 0.300, p < 0.05) in adjusted models. A group composed of dairy products and legumes was correlated with the overexpression of RhoA (β = 0.249, p < 0.05) and VEGF-A (β = 0.297, p < 0.05) in VI+.

Conclusions: Based on the multivariate findings, the dietary protein could associate with the overexpression of RhoA and VEGF-VEGFR2 in favor of lymphatic and vascular metastasis in BC patients.