Propelling the paradigm shift from reductionism to systems nutrition

AbstractThe complex physiology of living organisms represents a challenge for mechanistic understanding of the action of dietary bioactives in the human body and of their possible role in health and disease. Animal, cell, and microbial models have been extensively used to address questions that could not be pursued experimentally in humans, posing an additional level of complexity in translation of the results to healthy and diseased metabolism. The past few decades have witnessed a surge in development of increasingly sensitive molecular techniques and bioinformatic tools for storing, managing, and analyzing increasingly large datasets. Application of such powerful means to molecular nutrition research led to a major leap in study designs and experimental approaches yielding experimental data connecting dietary components to human health. Scientific journals bear major responsibilities in the advancement of science. As primary actors of dissemination to the scientific community, journals can impose rigid criteria for publishing only sound, reliable, and reproducible data. Journal policies are meant to guide potential authors to adopt the most updated standardization guidelines and shared best practices. Such policies evolve in parallel with the evolution of novel approaches and emerging challenges and therefore require constant updating. We highlight in this manuscript the major scientific issues that led to formulating new, updated journal policies forGenes& Nutrition, ...

Source: Genes and Nutrition - January 24, 2017 Category: Nutrition Source Type: research