Nutrients, non-nutrient components or xenobiotics are environmental factors that occur with a huge variability in dose and time in the daily diet. They hit a rather static genome, thereby affecting the function of a large number of proteins that are expressed in a certain cell or organ. Alterations of mRNA and protein levels are critical parameters in controlling the flux of nutrients or metabolites through a biochemical pathway. 

Nutrients and non-nutrient components of food, diet and lifestyle can affect essentially every step in the flow of genetic information from gene expression to protein synthesis, protein degradation and allosteric control of enzyme activity. Consequently, nutrients alter metabolic functions in the most complex ways. We are assessing these interactions of dietary constituents with the genome at the levels of the transcriptome, the proteome and the metabolome in model organisms from bacteria and yeast, to C. elegans and humans.