Food Microbiology and Multi-Omics Approaches

Microbial functions in food have got more and more attention from the researchers so that the investigation in food microbiology has drastically changed. It is well established that traditional culture methods for analyzing food microbiota are very limited. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) and omic technologies allow to deep understand the behaviour of microorganisms in foods. We discuss different sequencing approaches and several HTS investigations of food microbiota. Furthermore, we focus on the four major types of omics approaches, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics and on their impact on food microbiology. However, most of the studies based on next generation sequencing just give a partial representation of the food-based ecosystem, and it is emerging the need to adopt omic combination approaches, referred to as multi-omic approach, which show more evidence for biological mechanisms. At the moment, only a few examples that combine different omic approaches have been found in food microbiology study. The current scenario and examples of recent works are discussed, showing the usefulness to adopt this integrated approach. Certain limitations are also outlined.