NuGO newsletter - January 2012

2012 promises to be an exciting year for nutrigenomics research. Mechanistic research, genetics and transcriptomics, metabolimcs and epigenetics are now routine in nutrition. As scientists in molecular nutrition research, we need all these methods to cope with the growing challenges! Questions about the diet-health relationship arise from consumer to regulatory agencies, and application of omic and related technologies in nutritional studies will help to improve our understanding of the interaction between environment and human health. NuGO has established a reputation for being in the forefront of this research. Our proof-of-principle study used biomarkers for optimal health in combination with molecular nutrition. A new FP7 project, NutriTech, with the NuGO Association and many NuGO organisations as partners, will continue to combine emerging technologies with the concept of ‘phenotypic flexibility’, which was also the topic of NuGOweek 2011.


NuGOweek 2012 (28th-31st August 2012)    

NuGOweek 2012 (9th edition) will be in hotel and conference centre "Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa", Helsinki (FI). Local organisation is in the hands of our Finnish partner at the University of Kuopio, and the symposium will be co-hosted by SysDiet, the Scandinavian ‘NuGO’.


Infrastructure

The nutritional phenotype database (dbNP) is a major feature of the NuGO infrastructure. It is a data storage, sharing and evaluation system for nutrition studies, and is being used by many consortia and FP7 projects. Further development is an ongoing process with many organisations participating. A jamboree will be held for programmers and biologists during the first week of April 2012. For more information please contact: jildau.bouwman@tno.nl

The computer grid NBX, which connected many NuGO partners, ceased to function at the beginning of January 2012. We were unable to provide the budget for continued maintenance and development of this system. A special thanks to Tony Travis, who spent many hours in building the NBX. We are working on a (partial-)successor of NBX, taking care of the data sharing aspects, in the form of a computing cloud.

Finally, NuGO offers access to two important bioinformatics software packages, namely GeneGo and Genomatix, as we have established an agreement with these companies for a shared license. Information on use is available on NuGOnet.


New projects and applications

NuGO is participating in two EU-projects; Food4Me and NutriTech. Also, we are part of the consortium applying for the nutritional infrastructure road mapping exercise; NuGO will be responsible for the nutrigenomic case studies. Other partners include INRAN (coordinating), Maastricht, Oslo, Wageningen, Lund and TNO.

An attractive feature of NuGO is the data repository and sharing infrastructure. If you need these features in a project (proposal), consider involving NuGO as partner. More information is available at our website [visit NuGO]

Please use our internet page if you have messages and positions to announce.


Symposia

We are planning symposia and training workshops on selected topics of interest in parallel with NuGOweek 2012. We hope to involve young NuGO members by providing a series of travel grants. Keep an eye on NuGOnet for opportunities.


Take an active role

It is important for nutrigenomics and molecular nutrition research that everybody takes an active role in the development of this crucial area of modern biology and medicine. Don’t be shy – we have a lot to offer!