The fifth workshop on Nutrigenetics, Nutrigenomics, and Precision Nutrition will be held in June from 7-10, 2021, at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, NC. The workshop will be led by Dr. Saroja Voruganti and is sponsored in part by the University of North Carolina Nutrition Research Institute. This proposal requests partial offset of registration costs for attendance by graduate students and (depending on enrollment) postdoctoral and other young researchers. Of the 2016-2019 attendees, over half were students or young investigators, and over 75% are women. Additionally, half of the expected 2021 presenters (including the organizer) are women, and four are assistant professors. Gene-diet interactions can play a major role in health, both through dietary modification of gene expression (nutrigenomics) and through the effects of individual genetic variation of genes involved in nutrient metabolism (nutrigenetics) (NGx). Because ?NGx? research and application areas span from diet/nutrition to metabolism/biochemistry to population/computational genetics, it can be difficult for researchers and clinicians trained in one area to appreciate results emanating from another area. The consequent lack of awareness of important NGx research impairs translation to clinical practice; likewise, an underappreciation of clinical/epidemiological findings obfuscates the significance of findings from basic research. The Nutrigenetics, Nutrigenomics, and Precision Nutrition workshop provides a unique opportunity for attendees to discover the cutting edge of precision nutrition and to learn how to translate and leverage information spanning basic research to clinical applications for their own work. The workshop, held in years 2016-2019, was highly successful and attended by 62 - 93 persons with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, ranging from biochemistry to food science to bioinformatics to clinical practice. Thus, the workshop will bring together senior and junior scientists who would not normally meet or interact. Collectively, the workshop is highly translational with lecture topics including introductions to genetics and nutritional epidemiology, applications of NGx to cancer, CVD, and cognitive development, nutritional epigenetics, clinical research and (nutri) pharmacogenomics. An additional feature of this workshop is the inclusion of two interactive hands-on sessions where attendees learn how to analyze and interpret their own genetic data.
The integration of diet, nutrition, genetics, and genomics has tremendous potential to positively impact human health. Successful integration requires researchers and clinicians who have knowledge and skills bridging multiple classically defined specialties. The Nutrigenetics, Nutrigenomics, and Precision Nutrition workshop brings together a diverse group of scientists and introduces them to the underlying science and potential applications of nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics to allow them to incorporate precision nutrition into their research and practice.
