Preface to nutrition and epigenetics

The scope of this book is to focus on this novel, fascinating field pertaining to the role of nutritional factors in affecting epigenetic mechanisms therefore highlighting the vast topic that derives from a better understanding of the function of nutrients in disease by altering epigenetic phenomena. Why this topic is so intriguing? Certainly because epigenetics, although is an inherited mark as genetic marks are, differently from them is also reversible, therefore potentially modifiable. Little is known, however, in the field of nutrition and epigenetic inter-relationships and especially the mechanisms through which nutrients may modulate epigenetics are not identified so far. The growing interest towards epigenetics and the enlargement of notions even in the nutrition field as well as that of nutritional epigenetics certainly are opening up this fascinating field with promising perspectives for the pathogenesis of several diseases as well as therapeutic possibilities.