Fatty acids in control of gene expression

During the recent decade or so, there has been tremendous development in our understanding of the mechanism of action of certain nutrients. This process has been fostered primarily by the application of modern molecular and cellular biological techniques within the discipline of nutrition. This novel approach, which is now known as molecular nutrition, has revealed that many nutrients and vitamins seem to act essentially in the same way as steroidal hormones, i.e., by binding to soluble intranuclear receptors.¹ The ligand-receptor complexes then bind to promoters of regulated genes, thereby affecting their rate of transcription.