The Importance of Nutrition Throughout the Lifecycle

It has been estimated that it requires 47 differentiating cell cycles to make a human being and that 45 of these occur before the baby emerges from the womb. Each cell division requires an appropriate mix of all the nutritional building blocks and the metabolic cofactors necessary for the smooth running of the anabolic machinery. These simple facts emphasise the critical importance of fetal nutrition in producing a perfect baby ready to live a full, active, long and healthy life. Our current epigeneticresearch in The Gambia is focussing attention right at the beginning of fetal life; on the development of the very early embryowithin the first few hours after fusion of the egg and sperm.