About this Research Topic
Food may be thought of as a cocktail of hormones, which may help to explain how food alters cells’ communication, and how diet affects health in animals and humans.
Fatty acids are hormonelike food elements, like amino acids, vitamins, and other microelements, which can modulate specific signaling pathways in cells controlling complex biochemical circuitries, division and adaptation to stress stimuli, gene expression, respiration, life cycle, senescence, and death. The receptors activated by food elements are part of multiple families, including G-protein coupled receptors, ion channels, and enzymes. Increasing evidence demonstrates that healthy foods can reduce age-related disorders, including cardiovascular, immune, and cancer risk in genetically predisposed individuals. Accordingly, one can say that foods act as true pharmaceuticals, and hence a new discipline — “nutrition pharmacology” — asks to be recognized and explored.
Diets differing in protein, carbohydrates, and fat over the lifetime diversely affect health span, metabolism, and signaling pathways. Similarly, either single component (e.g., amino acid, fatty acid) substituted diet, or dietary supplements that behave as “drugs”, markedly change biochemical and molecular circuitries in health and disease. However, the cellular mechanisms in which nutritional components and supplements act as pharmaceuticals are still poorly understood.
In this Research topic, we would like to tackle the molecular and cellular processes that may explain the action of diet manipulation or dietary supplementation on aging and age-related disorders, such as metabolic disorders. Recent advances in omics and mass spectrometry analysis can add new insights and would be particularly helpful in this area.
This Research topic aims to define the methodological challenges and recent advances to explain the events involved in nutrition and supplement action on aging, which could be applied in a pharmacological context. The intertwined relationship between a massive number of metabolites, biochemical intermediates and substrates, originating from the consumed food and endogenous processes — including those produced by the intestinal microbiota — complicates the field tremendously. In particular, rarely the relevant molecular or cellular events affected by nutrients and supplements are unique or single; most frequently multiple molecular targets or processes are involved, and it is challenging, if possible, to disentangle the intricated networks with the same, more simple experimental and technical approach used in the case of drug targets. Not always, the null mutant or transgenic animal models are suitable; accordingly, a lot of thinking stimuli are needed to develop new vistas in this research context.
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). Please self-assess your MS using the ConPhyMP tool, and follow the standards established in the ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205). Please note the traditional context including the primary background and modern uses with supporting references must be included in the manuscript introduction. Purely in silico approaches using complex mixtures (extracts) are generally not considered.
Fatty acids are hormonelike food elements, like amino acids, vitamins, and other microelements, which can modulate specific signaling pathways in cells controlling complex biochemical circuitries, division and adaptation to stress stimuli, gene expression, respiration, life cycle, senescence, and death. The receptors activated by food elements are part of multiple families, including G-protein coupled receptors, ion channels, and enzymes. Increasing evidence demonstrates that healthy foods can reduce age-related disorders, including cardiovascular, immune, and cancer risk in genetically predisposed individuals. Accordingly, one can say that foods act as true pharmaceuticals, and hence a new discipline — “nutrition pharmacology” — asks to be recognized and explored.
Diets differing in protein, carbohydrates, and fat over the lifetime diversely affect health span, metabolism, and signaling pathways. Similarly, either single component (e.g., amino acid, fatty acid) substituted diet, or dietary supplements that behave as “drugs”, markedly change biochemical and molecular circuitries in health and disease. However, the cellular mechanisms in which nutritional components and supplements act as pharmaceuticals are still poorly understood.
In this Research topic, we would like to tackle the molecular and cellular processes that may explain the action of diet manipulation or dietary supplementation on aging and age-related disorders, such as metabolic disorders. Recent advances in omics and mass spectrometry analysis can add new insights and would be particularly helpful in this area.
This Research topic aims to define the methodological challenges and recent advances to explain the events involved in nutrition and supplement action on aging, which could be applied in a pharmacological context. The intertwined relationship between a massive number of metabolites, biochemical intermediates and substrates, originating from the consumed food and endogenous processes — including those produced by the intestinal microbiota — complicates the field tremendously. In particular, rarely the relevant molecular or cellular events affected by nutrients and supplements are unique or single; most frequently multiple molecular targets or processes are involved, and it is challenging, if possible, to disentangle the intricated networks with the same, more simple experimental and technical approach used in the case of drug targets. Not always, the null mutant or transgenic animal models are suitable; accordingly, a lot of thinking stimuli are needed to develop new vistas in this research context.
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). Please self-assess your MS using the ConPhyMP tool, and follow the standards established in the ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205). Please note the traditional context including the primary background and modern uses with supporting references must be included in the manuscript introduction. Purely in silico approaches using complex mixtures (extracts) are generally not considered.
Keywords: Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, Amino acids, Food supplements, Omics
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
