The completion of the Human Genome Project opens the door to a better Center Features Center Newsletters World Nutrition News World Nutrition Websites understanding of the basic causes of many human diseases. A great many diseases have a genetic basis. Often these disease are severe and appear early in life.
Examples are familial hypercholesterolemia and cystic fibrosis.
In a sense, these are pure genetic diseases. They do not r equire any environmental factors to elicit them. Although nutrition is not involved in the causation of m onogenic diseases, these diseases can have implications for nutrition. They reveal the effects of particular proteins or enzymes that also are influenced by nutritional factors. Thus, we have learned a great deal about human metabolism from monogenic diseases.