Diet, Genetics, and Disease: A Focus on the Middle East and North Africa Region

Figure 6

Vitamin D pathway and sites of interaction with dietary factors. Cutaneous or dietary vitamin D is hydroxylated in the liver to form 25-hydroxyvitamin D (1,2) and in the kidney to form 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (3). 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D binds to VDR (4), the 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D ligand promotes VDR-RXR heterodimerization (5), and the complex binds to VDRE to mediate transcriptional regulation of target genes (6). The concept of gene-diet interaction is described in the vitamin D pathway by the different polymorphisms in the VDR gene (a) and the dietary regulation of CYP24A1 enzyme (b).