December 2016

Mom’s Diet Can Affect Development of Next Two Generations Nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy can have lasting effects across generations that impact development not only of children, but also of grandchildren. These heritable effects are linked to...

Mom’s Diet Can Affect Development of Next Two Generations

November 17, 2016 • Nutritional deficiencies during pregnancy can have lasting effects across generations that impact development not only of children, but also of grandchildren. These heritable effects are linked to epigenetic changes that affect gene expression but not DNA sequence. At the NRI, we seek to understand how nutrition affects health and why different people respond differently to the same nutrients.

November 2016

Do Eggs Cause Heart Disease? Several recent studies linked increased levels of a metabolic product of dietary choline with higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) (Wang  et al., 2011; Tang  et al., 2013) through a mechanism that involved gut microbiota-produced...

Faculty and Research Opportunities

June 22, 2016 • The UNC Nutrition Research Institute offers opportunities for faculty and researchers to refine or expand a nutrition-related research program. The Institute is particularly interested in research related to nutrigenomics, metabolomics, epigenetics, clinical nutrition and/or energy expenditure.
Learn more about Faculty Fellows and Visiting Scholars.

June 2016

Cracking the connection between goes and diet could lead to future heart disease treatments Understanding the complex interplay of heredity, diet and microbes may one day lead to diets that prevent and treat cardiovascular disease. According to a recent scientific...

NRI presents inaugural short course for nutrition specialists

May 23, 2016 • The UNC Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) holds its first short course in Nutrigenetics, Nutrigenomics and Precision Nutrition, May 23 – 26. This workshop-style educational course features 16 expert-led presentations on an array of topics including “Nutrition and Epigenetics” and “MicroRNA and Metabolic Profiling.” State-of-the-art practice is an important component of the short course. In hands-on sessions participants will learn to analyze and interpret genetic data using PLINK, Harvard’s open-source, whole-genome association analysis software toolset.

April 2016

Anti-Inflammatory Diet May Fight Breast Cancer Promising work is underway in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen Hursting at the NRI to identify dietary interventions that can reduce the risk of cancer. Omega-3 fatty acids are well known anti-inflammatory dietary...