Narrator: This is Science Today. One of the exciting spin-offs of the Human Genome Project is a field called nutritional genomics. It's the study of how diets and genetics interact in health and disease.

Rodriguez: It looks at the whole human genome in response to nutrition.

Narrator: Ray Rodriguez, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Davis, directs the campus' Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics.

Rodriguez: A lot of scientists are talking about the interaction between diet and our genes and environment. And probably the most important component or factor of environment for humans is diet.

Narrator: Rodriquez is leading an international consortium of researchers to better understand this link.

Rodriguez: We're trying to look for those diet-gene interactions that are responsible for increasing our risks for certain diseases or alternatively, for those diet-gene interactions that promote health.

Narrator: An early priority is to set up a nutritional database where researchers around the world can file their results. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.