Microbes as Functional Food: Genomics and Metabolomics Surveys of Bacterial Probiotic Strains

Dear Colleagues,

Microbes inhabiting the human gastrointestinal tract (GIT) have been under the spotlight during the last decade, given the multiple associations detected between certain microbiota profiles and health status. Hundreds of studies report very often the contributing role of different bacterial groups in the development and prevention of a wide variety of diet-related diseases. Consequently, the characterization and use of probiotic strains have become an attractive alternative for the treatment of prevalent maladies such as Crohn Disease (CD), Irritable Bowel Disease/Syndrome (IDB/IBS), Celiac Disease (CeD), Ulcerative Colitis (UC), and obesity, among others, resulting frequently in an amelioration of the respective symptoms. Classically, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), essentially, strains from the Lactobacillus genus, and Bifidobacteria have been extensively used for the aims above stated, exhibiting interesting strain-specific traits for potential health claims. Notwithstanding, these types of bacteria constitute a minor proportion of the intestinal microbiota in adult humans and exhibit a transitory colonization pattern according to the animal and human studies reported, offering a limited protection against disease in the long term. Advances in anaerobe culturing techniques have permitted to re-examine the so-called "non-cultivable" microbial species present in the human gut. Accordingly, new culture media and better protocols and equipment have made possible the recovery of indigenous and prevalent microbial species of the human GIT, thus permitting to explore in depth their growth conditions, nutritional requirements, genomes, gene expression patterns, and metabolic circuits. The aim of this Special Issue is to present the characterization of potential new probiotic strains using cutting-edge technology to describe: (1) their genetic traits of interest for disease prevention; (2) in vitro and in vivo studies of synbiotic products (probiotics + prebiotics); (3) gene expression and metabolic products released when exposed to prebiotics; and (4) production of metabolites with impact on the gut–brain axis function.

Dr. Alfonso Benítez-Páez
Guest Editor

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