Raymond L. Rodriguez
Professor
rlrodriguez@ucdavis.edu
Molecular & Cellular Biology
Office
5313 Biomedical & Genome Research Facility, 1139 Plant Reproductive Biology Laboratory
(530) 752-3263; 752-1185
Lab
752-3613 (Yolanda Cortez
1974
PhD
University of California, Santa Cruz
Biology
1969
BA
California State University, Fresno
Biology
Nutritional genomics is one of the latest developments in high throughput, systems biology. It is the study of diet-gene interactions on a whole genome scale with the goal of developing innovative solutions to disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. There are a few already known well-characterized examples of diet-gene interactions affecting human health: e.g., lactose intolerance, phenylketonuria, galatosemia, gluten-sensitive enteropathy, and familial hypercholesterolemia. In these classical examples, disease-specific genetic polymorphisms are identified, their population distributions are known, and clinical dietary guidelines are developed for disease prevention and treatment. In addition to these disease conditions, many common chronic diseases: e.g., obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and prostate cancer, are also associated with diet as a risk or course-modifying factor. However, the genetic background of these polygenic diseases is more complex and the mechanistic explanations of the diet-gene interactions could become possible only with the recent advances in post-genomic ( omic ) technologies. The chemopreventive properties of a soy-based polypeptide is being investigated using microarray analysis of human cells and small animal models. This peptide has the ability to remodel chromatin structure and to up-regulate genes related to tumor suppression, apoptosis, cell cycle control and DNA repair.
http://www.mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-labs/rodriguez/research_interests/index.html
Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award, Div. Biol. Sci., 1996-1997; Distinguished Service Award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis, 1988; National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1976-1977; A. P. Giannini Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1974-1976; Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1973-1974
Director, Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics
American Association for the Advancement of Science; American Chemical Society; Sigma Xi Society
Plant Biology
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Magbanua, M. J., Dawson, K., Huang, L., Malyj, W., Gregg, J., Galvez, A. and Rodriguez, R.L. 2006. Nutrient-gene interactions involving soy peptide and chemopreventive genes in prostate epithelial cells, in Nutrigenomics: Discovering the Path to Personalized Nutrition, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey, pp. 255-76.
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Dawson, K., Rodriguez, R.L., Hawkes, W.C. and Malyj, W. 2006. Biocomputation and the analysis of complex data sets in nutritional genomics, in Nutrigenomics: Discovering the Path to Personalized Nutrition, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey, pp. 375-401.
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Kaput, J. and Rodriguez, R.L. 2006. Nutrigenomics: Discovering the Path to Personalized Nutrition, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.
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Dawson, K., Rodriguez, R.L. and Malyj, W. 2005. Sample phenotype clusters in high-density oligonucleotide microarray data sets are revealed using Isomap, a nonlinear algorithm. BMC Bioinformatics 2005, 6:195.
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Kaput et al., 2005. The case for strategic international alliances to harness nutritional genomics for public and personal health. British Journal of Nutrition, 94:623-632.
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Kaput, J. and Rodriguez, R.L. 2004. Nutritional Genomics: The next frontier in the post-genomic era. Physiol. Genomics, 16:166-177.
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Huang, J., Nandi, S., Wu, L. Yalda, D., Bartly, G., Rodriguez, R.L., Lonnerdal, B. and Huang, N. 2003. Expression of natural antimicrobial human lysozyme in rice grains. Molecular Breeding, 10:83-94.
BIS
101
Genes and Gene Expression
Spring
MCB
178
Nutritional Genomics
Fall
MCB
263
Fundamentals of Biotechnology
Winter
MCB
294
Biotechnology Seminar Program
Fall,Winter,Spring