Nutrient — gene interactions are responsible for maintaining health and preventing or delaying disease. Unbalanced diets for
a given genotype lead to chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular, and are likely to contribute to increased
severity and/or early-onset of many age-related diseases. Many nutrition and many genetic studies still fail to properly include
both variables in the design, execution, and analyses of human, laboratory animal, or cell culture experiments. The complexity
ofnutrient-gene interactions has led to the realization that strategic international alliances are needed to improve the completeness
of nutrigenomic studies — a task beyond the capabilities of a single laboratory team. Eighty-eight researchers from 22 countries
recently outlined the issues and challenges for harnessing the nutritional genomics for public and personal health. The next
step in the process of forming productive international alliances is the development of a virtual center for organizing collaborations
and communications that foster resources sharing, best practices improvements, and creation of databases. We describe here
plans and initial efforts of creating the Nutrigenomics Information Portal, a web-based resource for the international nutrigenomics
society. This portal aims at becoming the prime source ofinformation and interaction for nutrigenomics scientists through
a collaborative effort.
Keywords Best practices - Information portal - International alliances - Nutrigenomics