ALPHARMA BEEF CATTLE NUTRITION SYMPOSIUM: Nutrition and the genome1

It has long been appreciated that animals fed the same diet may perform differently. This is due to the ability of nutrients to interact with and affect molecular pathways that result in differences in BW gain, production performance, or disease resistance. To understand these effects, studies are being undertaken to discover how the differential expression and function of genes occur with different diets. These studies are using new technologies, genomic resources, and analysis techniques that have recently become available for domestic animals. Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics are new research approaches that strive to optimize health by looking beyond the diet to understand the effects of food at the genetic and epigenetic levels. Nutrigenomics is focused on the effects of diet on health through an understanding of how bioactive chemicals in foods and supplements alter gene expression or the structure of the genome of an animal. Nutrigenetics focuses on how the genetic composition (i.e., genetic variation) of an animal influences their response to a given diet. Results from these studies will aid in formulating nutritionally appropriate diets that may be optimized for animals based on their genomic underpinnings. Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics unite many fields: nutrition, bioinformatics, molecular biology, genomics, functional genomics, epidemiology, and epigenomics. The use of multi-disciplinary tools promises new opportunities to investigate the complex interactions of the genome and the diet of an animal. Through these new approaches, the partnerships of the genome and nutrition will be revealed resulting in improved efficiency of diets, enhanced sustainability of animals as a protein source, and improved methods for preventing illnesses.