Pro-biomics: Omics Technologies To Unravel the Role of Probiotics in Health and Disease

Abstract

The comprehensive characterization of probiotic action has flourished during the past few decades, alongside the evolution of high-throughput, multiomics platforms. The integration of these platforms into probiotic animal and human studies has provided valuable insights into the holistic effects of probiotic supplementation on intestinal and extraintestinal diseases. Indeed, these methodologies have informed about global molecular changes induced in the host and residing commensals at multiple levels, providing a bulk of metagenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data. The meaningful interpretation of generated data remains a challenge; however, the maturation of the field of systems biology and artificial intelligence has supported analysis of results. In this review article, we present current literature on the use of multiomics approaches in probiotic studies, we discuss current trends in probiotic research, and examine the possibility of tailor-made probiotic supplementation. Lastly, we delve deeper into newer technologies that have been developed in the last few years, such as single-cell multiomics analyses, and provide future directions for the maximization of probiotic efficacy.

Keywords: lactic acid bacteria; metabolomics; metagenomics; microbiome; probiotics; proteomics; transcriptomics.

FIGURE 1

The road to precision probiotics. The unique host genetic and microbiota signatures, alongside anthropological and immune parameters, can determine the efficiency of probiotic supplementation. The identification of these factors using high-throughput multiomics analysis and systems biology approaches can set the basis for tailor-made probiotic interventions.