Food Omics Validation: Towards Understanding Key Features for Gut Microbiota, Probiotics and Human Health

Abstract

Probiotics are constituents of functional foods, which when administered in appropriate amounts confer a benefit to the host. Research studies performed on probiotics and gut microbiota along recent years have been focused on investigating the correlation between their molecular features and their impacts on individual health status. Consequently, many present and future challenges are being raised to elucidate the molecular bases of their interaction-mediated systemic effects, along with the ability to manipulate them for preventive and therapeutic interventions. Moreover, insights derived from the parallel evolution of “omics” technologies, with applications in different fields of biomedicine, are being efficiently transferred to this area of molecular microbiology. Thus, the present work compiles a summary of the general and useful omics applications: genomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, phenomics, and recently, integromics and interactomics and their putative use for validating models of interactions of the better-known probiotic microorganisms administered Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species. The impact on molecular resistance features, formula preparation, and route administration are also discussed. Omics tools will generate large amounts of data that, once correctly interpreted, are expected to rapidly validate the knowledge of probiotic molecular fundaments that trigger important positive human biological processes.