Math Models:Experimental Nutrition/Health Sciences

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A healthful diet is improtant for growth, development, reproduction, and disease prevention. Nutritional research initially focused on identification of required nutrients and quantification of the minimal amounts required to avoid clinical deficiency. More recently, the role of nutrition in maintaining long-term health has come to the forefront. Assessing nutritional impact on long-term health is difficult as the latency period for many health events can be quite long. Indications of disease progression can be discerned from metabolic profiles and kinetic measurements derived from compartmental modeling techniques. Assessment of metabolic measures from an individual must be considered in the context of genetic diversity, and thus stochastic elements are needed if the models are to be used to predict optimal nutrition for a population. However, deterministic representations of the interactions among genes and metabolism are needed if nutrition is to be tailored to the individual in support of health maintenance. The objective of the conference is to provide a forum for presentation of modelling techniques that can be used to assess and integrate metabolic information as it relates to energy, protein, vitamin, and mineral nutrition, genetics, and human health, and to provide training for investigators that are intrested in using modeling to enhance their experimental program. The four day conference will focus on modeling techniques useful for assessing nutritional status including techniques to integrate transcriptome and metabonome data. Two days of the conference will be devoted to a workshop designed to provide training in kinetic modeling for investigators with minimal or no modeling experience. Training will including model choice and design, parameter estimation, and model assessment. Nutritional adequacy of the various vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and energetic substrates avoids clinical deficiency, and such requirements have been largely established. However, requirements with respect to long-term health benefits have not been established. Models can be used to detect metabolic aberrations that could lead to long-term health detriment and to predict optimal nutrient requirements for long-term health maintenance. Presenters will address this topic area.