There are a lot of foodies in this world, but there are also a lot of people who don't value eating! Today, I will emphasize the importance of eating with you. Eating (nutrition) can affect genes, change genes, and even affect the fate of life. The people take food as the sky, but the simple words contain profound philosophy.
Let's start with the importance of genes
The body's genetic material is DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and its basic structure is the double helix structure, known as the double helix of life. It was discovered jointly by James Watson and Crick in 1953, for which they won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In a 1989 interview with Time magazine, Watson said:
"Once upon a time, we thought it was the stars in the sky that determined our destiny. Now that we know, genes determine our destiny. ”
But now we say this sentence has its limitations!
Since the 1990s, with the implementation of the human genome project, people have gradually understood the interaction between genes and genes, genes and the environment, no longer believe in the mechanical determination of gene fatalism, the basic consensus of the scientific community is this: all the genetic information of human beings (that is, the genome) is determined from the moment of formation of the fertilized egg, the base arrangement in the gene is fixed, unless it is destroyed by strong ionizing radiation or chemicals, their sequence remains unchanged for life. But the functional expression and activity of genes can be changed. In layman's terms, the switch for gene expression can be turned on or off.
Among them, the genetic impact of nutrition is the most extensive and long-term.
Nutrition has a significant impact on the regulation of gene expression
In 1992, the World Health Organization WHO first proposed the concept of the four cornerstones of health in the famous Victoria Declaration, namely a reasonable diet, moderate exercise, smoking cessation and alcohol restriction, and psychological balance. The first of these is a reasonable diet, that is, nutrition. The four cornerstones are ranked first, which shows its weight.
There is a vivid case of the profound effect of nutrition on gene expression on the fate of individuals:
The queen bee lays eggs in WangTai
Why is the queen bee?
In a bee colony, there are thousands of working worker bees (female bees), only one queen bee (also a female bee), the same are female bees, the queen bee and the worker bees share a set of genetic sequences, but why can the queen bee become a queen bee? I'm afraid the worker bees will lament the injustice of fate! It turned out that the places where they were placed after they were born were different, the things they ate were different, and their fates were completely different.
The queen bee larvae are laid by the mother of the previous generation of queen bees in the royal stage, and are the proud sons of heaven who grew up drinking royal jelly; and the worker bees are born in ordinary hives, drinking honey and growing up, naturally they are used to finding honey to collect honey. Drinking royal jelly to be the king, drinking honey to work for life, you say that the weight of eating is not important, the weight of nutrition is not important? Therefore, nutrition affects the expression of genes and even changes the fate of individuals.
Nutritional genomics of the interaction of genes and food
On April 14, 2003, the sequencing work of the Human Genome Project was completed, the entire series of the human genome was deciphered, and a new discipline was born, that is, nutritional genomics. Nutrigenomics " contains two aspects: one is the effect of food and nutrition on gene expression; the other is the regulation of nutrient metabolism by genes, which are interactive. The same kind of food, some people eat no problem, others but the reaction is very large, the root cause is the individual genetic differences. Theoretically, everyone can obtain their own full set of genetic information through sequencing services, and develop their own personalized nutritional diet plan accordingly, which will contain the health code of our body - what foods may be allergic and cannot be eaten, what foods can be eaten, how to eat (when to eat, how much to eat), that is, the problem of tolerance.
How nutrition affects our genes
As we all know, the basic nutrients needed by the human body include: carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals. Studies have confirmed that large or trace elements in food (nutrition) can directly control gene expression through hormonal action. Glucose and its metabolites, fatty acids, cholesterol and vitamins (fat-soluble) in the main nutrients of the human body can regulate the function of genes through transcription factors.
As mentioned earlier, the dna (genetic) sequence of a person is determined at the moment of fertilization. After birth, it is almost impossible to artificially alter and improve our DNA (genes). Scientific studies have shown that embryos and their early development can be regulated through food (nutrients), and this regulation can even improve the expression of genes.
The discovery of heritable changes in gene expression without altering the DNA sequence includes enzymatic DNA methylation and histone modifications and other modifications to chromatin structure. The human diet contains a large number of nutrients that may affect methyl metabolism.
This shows that nutrition can have a significant impact on gene expression, and some of them are even more effective in embryonic development than in adulthood (such as folic acid supplementation in pregnant women to prevent fetal malformations). This shows how important the food nutrition spectrum of those pregnant expectant mothers is to the baby! This may explain from another aspect why the child's eating habits are so close to the mother's.