Herbal Diet and the Impact of Nutrition on Lipogenic Activity, a System Biology Study

Human diet is branded with higher caloric and protein content and cooking processes in comparison with the diet of the primate species. The aim of this study was to explore the differences between human diet and chimpanzee diet which consists of fruits and vegetables, to find benefits and harmful aspects of human nutritional behavior.

Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of mouse liver in response to consume “human cafeteria diet” and “chimpanzee diet” were acquired form Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The DEGs were assessed based on p-adj and fold change criteria. The significant DEGs were included in a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network to form an interactome unit. Central nodes of the studied network were determined based on degree value and betweenness centrality. The identified central genes were evaluated via gene ontology.

Numbers of 150 significant DEGs that discriminated the two nutrition diet regimes were introduced. Fatty acid synthase (FASN), stearoylCoA desaturase (SCD), and farnesyl-diphosphate farnesyltransferase 1 (FDFT1) were pointed out as the central DEGs. “Activation of gene expression by SREBF (SREBP)” and “NR1H2 & NR1H3 regulate gene expression linked to lipogenesis” were highlighted as two classes of the biological terms that were related to the central DEGs.

The findings indicated that human cafeteria diet is a lipogenic regime compared to the chimpanzee diet which is enriched with vegetables. The studied human nutrition behavior was accompanied with increased level of fatty acid synthesis enzymes beside cholesterol accumulation in body.