Molecular Techniques in the Microbial Ecology of Fermented Foods

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Molecular Techniques in Food Fermentation: Principles and Applications

   • Giorgio Giraffa, Domenico Carminati

   Pages 1-30

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3. Dairy Products

   • Salvatore Coppola, Giuseppe Blaiotta, Danilo Ercolini

   Pages 31-90

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4. Fermented Meat Products

   • Kalliopi Rantsiou, Luca Cocolin

   Pages 91-118

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5. Sourdough Fermentations

   • Rudi F. Vogel, Matthias A. Ehrmann

   Pages 119-144

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6. Vegetable Fermentations

   • Hikmate Abriouel, Nabil Ben Omar, Rubén Pérez Pulido, Rosario Lucas López, Elena Ortega, Magdalena Martínez Cañamero et al.

   Pages 145-161

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7. Wine Fermentation

   • David A. Mills, Trevor Phister, Ezekial Neeley, Eric Johannsen

   Pages 162-192

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8. Beer Production

   • Giuseppe Comi, Marisa Manzano

   Pages 193-207

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9. Other Fermentations

   • Christèle Humblot, Jean-Pierre Guyot

   Pages 208-224

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10. Probiotics: Lessons Learned from Nucleic Acid-based Analysis of Bowel Communities

    • Rodrigo Bibiloni, Christophe Lay, Gerald W. Tannock

    Pages 225-244

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11. Bioinformatics for DNA Sequence-based Microbiota Analyses

    • Knut Rudi

    Pages 245-254

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12. Role of Bacterial ‘Omics’ in Food Fermentation

    • Monique Zagorec, Stéphanie Chaillou, Marie Christine Champomier-Vergès, Anne-Marie Crutz-Le Coq

    Pages 255-273

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13. Back Matter

    Pages 275-280

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The approach to study microorganisms in food has changed. In the last few years the field of food fermentations has experienced a very fast development, thanks to the application of methods allowing precise picturing of their microbial ecology. As a consequence, new information is available on the structure and dynamics of the microbial populations taking turns during fermented food production. This is the age when functional genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are going to shed light on the overall role of bacteria in food ferm- tation, considering also their interactions. Nevertheless, the last 10 years can be considered the “detectomics” era, since much research effort has been dedicated to the development and optimization of biomolecular methods for the detection, reliable identification and monitoring of microorganisms involved in food fermentations. The identification of species and strains during the different phases of fermented foods production allows the understanding of the time when they act or play a role in the food matrix, and the molecular methods can, thus, be used for this purpose in a sort of functional diagnostics. It is well recognized by researchers world-wide that traditional microbiological methods often fail to characterize minor populations or microorganisms for which a selective enrichment is necessary. Moreover, stressed and injured cells need specific culturing conditions to recover and become cultivable on agar media.

• DNA
• Fermentation
• bioinformatics
• ecology
• fermented foods
• food microbiology
• food science
• microbial ecology
• probiotic
• probiotics

• Dipartimento di Valorizzazione e Protezione delle Risorse Agroforestali, University of Torino, Italy

  Luca Cocolin

• Department of Food Science School of Biotechnological Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

  Danilo Ercolini

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