Another experimental approach to examine interindividual variability to a nutritional intervention is the mixed meal/ macronutrient challenge test. Analogous to oral glucose tolerance tests, in which the metabolic response to a standardized carbohydrate challenge is investigated, a mixed macronutrient challenge can be used to probe the metabolic response to a complex meal. Using standard clinical measurements, such a challenge can be used to simultaneously assess insulin sensitivity and fat tolerance. However, by expanding the experimental end points to include both physiologic and broad metabolic responses using modern metabolomic technologies, the potential for phenotypic profiling of an individual’s response to such a standardized meal is extraordinary. For instance, an individual’s metabolic flexibility , their metabolic health, and the potential for their response to interventions can all be assessed. Another powerful application of metabolomic phenotyping in nutritional research is the application to twin studies. By employing sets of both dizygotic and monozygotic twins, these approaches have demonstrated the power to segregate and quantify the genetic and environmental factors driving covariance between physiologic and metabolic traits and health outcomes. In summary, characterizing the range and nature of both fasting and postprandial nutritional phenotypes based on differences in metabolism in healthy populations offers novel approaches to identify individuals that may benefit from more individualized nutritional guidance to improve and/or maintain their health.

Moreover, procona valencia tools exist today to begin this task. The application of these tools in well-designed clinical trials will be critical to effectively demonstrate their value in aligning nutritional guidance and/or interventions with metabolic phenotypes.Gene-by-diet interactions have the potential to have a tremendous impact on human health. Throughout history, humans evolutionarily adapted to their local environments to move across the globe, including to their changing diets. However, transitions to the modern Western diet in the last 75 y have resulted in maladaptations leading to a high prevalence of various chronic diseases, including obesity, cancer, and cardiometabolic diseases that disproportionately affect certain populations and create ethnic health disparities. For example, the adoption of the Western diet brought about a dramatic increase in the intake of PUFAs, specifically dietary ω-6 PUFAs. This shift was initiated by an American Heart Association recommendation in 1961 to replace dietary SFAs with PUFAs. Evidence supporting the recommendation included randomized controlled trials and cohort studies conducted in non-Hispanic White populations showing benefits of increasing ω-6 PUFAs on levels of serum lipids and lipoproteins. It was also assumed that only a small proportion of these ω-6 PUFAs could be converted to proinflammatory/prothrombotic long-chain ω-6 PUFAs, such as arachidonic acid, so adding 5%–10% energy as ω-6 PUFAs would have limited detrimental inflammatory/thrombotic effects due to saturation of the biosynthetic pathway. However, studies began to emerge a decade ago that showed genetic ancestry plays a critical role in determining the metabolic capacity of the long-chain ω-6 PUFA biosynthetic pathway. Specifically, several studies revealed that populations with African ancestry have much higher frequencies of genetic variants in the FA desaturase cluster on chromosome 11 that markedly enhance the conversion of dietary ω-6 PUFAs to the long-chain ω-6, arachidonic acid and proin- flammatory/prothrombotic oxylipins , and endocannabinoids metabolites. This underlying pathogenetic mechanism potentially results in a higher risk of chronic disease in those of African ancestry compared with those with European ancestry.

The human gut responds rapidly to significant changes in the diet, and long-term dietary habits can exert strong effects. The influence of dietary components has had a long history of impact on gut health and maintenance of high gut microbial diversity. However, the gut microbiomes in humans are highly diverse and variable among individuals. Moreover, the influence of specific dietary components on the gut microbiome community structure and microbial metabolic function may vary among individual microbiomes. Thus, diet–microbiome interactions are highly individual and idiosyncratic, especially over one’s lifetime. Myriad dietary compounds are known to modulate human gut microbiome structure and function, with impact on disease; among these, dietary fibers were first established for their protective effects against chronic disease at population scales, which are widely believed to be largely mediated by the microbiome. Although dietary fiber intake is widely associated with positive health outcomes, persistent public health and nutrition messaging in many such nations has made only modest gains in increasing consumption. Thus, dietary fibers remain, to date, the only microbiome-focused nutrient with established dietary guidelines for population-scale health. If populations are recalcitrant to increasing their overall fiber intake, dietary fiber-based strategies to improve health must seek to identify the fiber types most active in stimulating the appropriate microbiome responses to benefit host physiology. This is not trivial in that 1) as a category, “fiber” simply means the non–human-digestible plant components and includes a vast array of molecular structures, both soluble and insoluble; and 2) the mechanisms by which these divergent structures alter the structure and function of gut microbiota, thereby influencing health, are poorly understood.

Coupled with the fact that many fiber intervention studies do not specify or characterize the fiber structures employed , it is very challenging to discern which structural variables are influential on the responses of gut microbiota, both in vitro and in vivo. Consequently, the ways in which fiber structures differentially influence ecology in the gut and metabolic function suggest that specific fibers can be targeted to desirable microbial consumers, thereby potentially being health beneficial at much smaller daily doses and at population scales . Fiber polysaccharide structures contain a dizzying array of linkages among glycosyl residues that, in turn, generate strong differences in higher-order structure of these substrates. Because microbial carbohydrate-active enzymes are highly specific to the bonds they hydrolyze, differences in genome content or regulation of these carbohydrate-active enzymes can drive division of labor in degradation of polysaccharide consumption. The Lindemann laboratory at Purdue University has demonstrated that 1) metabolism of fibers is emergent across individuals but structural differences select for similar microbiota across donors and 2) polysaccharides can structure communities and maintain diversity against high-dilution pressure. These data strongly suggest that fiber fine structures are highly selective for consortia of fermenting microbes and sustain them in diverse communities, potentially serving as a basis for targeting these microbiota in the midst of complex and idiosyncratic human gut communities. The hypothesis is that there are general ecologic strategies that microbes use to gain advantage with respect to fiber fermentation and possible downstream health benefits. It is believed that these strategies are genetically encoded; thus, they provide a foundation for engineering fibers that will allow the gut microbiome to be manipulated for predictable outcomes across disparate individuals. To test the hypothesis that subtle differences in polysaccharide structure select for distinct microbial communities, 2 subtly different model polysaccharides, red and white sorghum arabinoxylan were fermented with identical microbiota. RSAX was slightly more complex at the level of branching diversity than WSAX and maintained a more diverse microbiome in which members of Bacteroides spp., especially B. ovatus, were dominant. In contrast, WSAX promoted the growth of Agathobacter rectalis and Bifidobacterium longum-dominated communities. Interestingly, flower bucket these polysaccharides selected for genomically identical strains across 3 unrelated donors. Alongside the differences in community structure, RSAX and WSAX were fermented to different metabolic outcomes. Further, when fed to mice, WSAX and a human-derived microbial consortium adapted to its use modified the cecal metabolism of mice in sex specific ways. Interestingly, the effects of transient human microbes could be seen in metabolite profiles and in postantibiotic community resilience in the mice. Our data suggest that 1) polysaccharide fine structure deterministically selects for fermenting communities; 2) fine polysaccharide variants often target largely the same microbes across individuals; and 3) in turn, these differences lead to divergent metabolic outcomes, which are potentially impactful on host physiology and resilience to stress. Together, these results suggest that well-characterized fiber structures may be used to influence human health at population scales and relatively small doses.Globally, animal pollination benefits around 75% of important crops by improving yield, quality and crop stability . Bees are the primary pollinators . In California, there are approximately 1,600- 2,000 species of bees in the state of California, USA, , of which only 17 genera composed of 46 species commonly occur in California .

Bees, both California native and exotic naturalized European honey bees, are the primary pollinators of 35% of all crops for human food production . Even with this richness, there is evidence of species and population declines that suggest finding new ways to support these critical suppliers of ecosystem services is important. One potential avenue for supporting pollinators is to modify human dominated landscapes. With so many bee species found in California there is potential for further integration of bees into human-dominated environments. This research aims to gain clarity and understanding about which California naturalized and native bees use horticultural plantings in novel ecosystems. These novel ecosystems, uniquely man made planting combinations, are prevalent in most urban and agricultural landscapes and could act as population sources or ‘reservoirs’ for crop pollination or for native bee conservation. The degree to which horticultural urban plantings are acting as ecological foraging habitat needs to be examined closely.Habitat loss and fragmentation are often cited as the main reasons for declines in California native bee populations . Human development by urban and agricultural land uses of what was once a continuous natural bee landscape causes smaller, more spatially isolated habitat patches that can result in population extirpation and ultimately species extinction . How bees respond to fragmentation varies, but it is essential to better understand this process to mitigate its effects . Other factors contributing to the magnitude of bee population declines due to habitat fragmentation include differences in the foraging range, dispersal ability, distance between patches, body size, feeding specializations, and population size . For example, different bees vary widely in their foraging radii ; the longest-distance disperser, Apis melifera can forage approximately 3.2 km from their hive, whereas other small bodied bees such as the California native bee, Hylaeus sp., are estimated to forage just 182 m from a nest . An array of studies and responses must thus be considered from an autecological perspective. We found three major issues with current bee habitat conservation efforts: 1) Floral resources are critical, 2) There is currently a lack of shared terminology to describe the interactions between bees and forage plants, and 3) Lists of “bee plants” contain few overlaps.A critical aspect of bees’ interactions with their surroundings is the plants they use for forage. Studying bees’ foraging preferences can help to determine whether a habitat is suitable or not. Seen in this way, groupings of suitable plants represent favorable habitat, and unutilized or unfavorable plants represent gaps in habitat value. If foraging plants are lacking, bees will experience a mismatch in the ecological setting. By studying feeding preferences, we can begin to build effective bee friendly conservation landscapes. Enhancing landscape structure and function is a favored solution towards alleviating bee habitat fragmentation issues . This is a similar approach to land management for vertebrate conservation . The general theory is to build ideal habitat and that animal species will come. With vertebrate conservation, much work has been done to understand which landscape aspects are attractive. However, this level of research has not yet been done with invertebrates, including bees. The cornerstone current theory of landscape ecology is based on maximizing landscape structure, elements, and form to best suit selected animal species. This sort of habitat design has been done successfully for years with more charismatic animals and has proved to be a successful approach in materializing key species in ecologically designed sites . Thus, when assessing habitat suitability for bees, correcting plant resource deficiencies is essential. Moreover, bees vary in foraging preferences, and, therefore, it is essential to analyze the landscape from their various perspectives. This study uses an “organism centered view” to conservation and focuses on the suitability of foraging plants, to ensure basic bee foraging needs are better understood by scientists, conservationists, and landscape designers for strategic implementation.In recent years, there has been a trend of creating lists of plants for bees, the best of which are based on actual bee-to-plant foraging data . The literature utilizes various terms to describe the connection between bees and their preferred foraging flowers, including: pollinator plants , relative attraction , plants for pollinators , bee friendly , among others.