Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AP, UK.
Annu Rev Food Sci Technol. 2013;4:381-99. doi: 10.1146/annurev-food-030212-182612. Epub 2013 Jan 3.
Understanding the role of the diet in determining human health and disease is one major objective of modern nutrition. Mammalian biocomplexity necessitates the incorporation of systems biology technologies into contemporary nutritional research. Metabonomics is a powerful approach that simultaneously measures the low-molecular-weight compounds in a biological sample, enabling the metabolic status of a biological system to be characterized. Such biochemical profiles contain latent information relating to inherent parameters, such as the genotype, and environmental factors, including the diet and gut microbiota. Nutritional metabonomics, or nutrimetabonomics, is being increasingly applied to study molecular interactions between the diet and the global metabolic system. This review discusses three primary areas in which nutrimetabonomics has enjoyed successful application in nutritional research: the illumination of molecular relationships between nutrition and biochemical processes; elucidation of biomarker signatures of food components for use in dietary surveillance; and the study of complex trans-genomic interactions between the mammalian host and its resident gut microbiome. Finally, this review illustrates the potential for nutrimetabonomics in nutritional science as an indispensable tool to achieve personalized nutrition.
了解饮食在决定人类健康和疾病中的作用是现代营养学的主要目标之一。哺乳动物的生物复杂性需要将系统生物学技术纳入当代营养研究中。代谢组学是一种强大的方法，可同时测量生物样本中的低分子量化合物，从而能够描述生物系统的代谢状态。这种生化特征包含与内在参数（如基因型）和环境因素（包括饮食和肠道微生物群）相关的潜在信息。营养代谢组学或营养代谢组学正越来越多地应用于研究饮食与全球代谢系统之间的分子相互作用。本文综述了营养代谢组学在营养研究中三个成功应用的主要领域：阐明营养与生化过程之间的分子关系；阐明用于饮食监测的食物成分的生物标志物特征；以及研究哺乳动物宿主与其常驻肠道微生物群之间复杂的跨基因组相互作用。最后，本文说明了营养代谢组学在营养科学中的潜力，作为实现个性化营养的不可或缺的工具。
