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Fermented Food Microbiology Researcher in Mohali, India Receives 2024 Gregor Reid Award for Outstanding Scholars in Developing Nations

/in News /by KC

ISAPP’s board of directors is happy to announce the 2024 winner of the Gregor Reid Award for Outstanding Scholars in Developing Nations: Dr. Rounak Chourasia PhD, a research associate at the National Agri-food Biotechnology Institute in Mohali, Punjab (India).

Dr. Chourasia’s work focuses on discovering microorganisms with specific properties that contribute to the enhanced health benefits of a traditional cheese called chhurpi from Sikkim Himalaya (a state in Northeast India). He has developed a process for the production of milk cheese using selected strains of lactic acid bacteria, resulting in the release of novel bioactive peptides with potential nutraceutical applications. Furthermore, he has applied selected microbial strains to develop bioactive peptide-enriched novel soybean cheese suitable for those with lactose intolerance. The research has not only contributed to knowledge about the functional properties of chhurpi, but has also provided a foundation for helping local farmers expand their entrepreneurial opportunities.

Dr. Chourasia received both a Bachelor and Master of Science in microbiology from the University of North Bengal, India, followed by a PhD in biotechnology in 2023 from the Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development (DBT-IBSD), regional centre, Sikkim, and Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University under the guidance of Dr. Amit Kumar Rai and Prof. Dinabandhu Sahoo.

The 2024 committee selected Dr. Chourasia from among the many qualified candidates for the Gregor Reid Award for Outstanding Scholars in Developing Nations in this inaugural year. ISAPP established the award in honor of Dr. Gregor Reid PhD, for the purpose of recognizing and supporting early career researchers within low and middle income countries (LMICs). Dr. Reid is a founding board member of ISAPP, former President of ISAPP, and founder of the ISAPP Students and Fellows Association (SFA), whose work in LMICs throughout his career showed his commitment to scientific excellence, innovation, and community development.

Dr. Chourasia will receive an award plaque and will speak about his work at the ISAPP annual meeting in July, 2024.

Research on the microbiome and health benefits of fermented foods – a 40 year perspective

/in Consumer Blog, ISAPP Science Blog /by KC

By Prof. Bob Hutkins, PhD, University of Nebraska Lincoln, USA

Many ISAPPers remember when fermented foods attracted hardly any serious attention from scientists outside the field. Certainly, most clinicians and health professionals gave little notice to fermented foods. In the decades before there were artisan bakeries and microbreweries proliferating on Main Street USA, even consumers did not seem very interested in fermented foods.

When I began my graduate program at the University of Minnesota in 1980, I was very interested in microbiology, but I did not know a lot about fermented foods. Accordingly, I was offered two possible research projects. One involved growing flasks of Staphylococcus aureus, concentrating the enterotoxins, feeding that material to lab animals, and then waiting for the emetic response.

My other option was to study how the yogurt bacterium, Streptococcus thermophilus, metabolized lactose in milk. This was the easiest career choice ever, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Indeed, that lab at Minnesota was one of only a handful in North America that conducted research on the physiology, ecology, and genetics of microbes important in fermented foods. Of the few labs in North America delving into fermented foods, most emphasized dairy fermentations, although some studied vegetable, meat, beer, wine, and bread fermentations. Globally, labs in Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were more engaged in fermented foods research than we were in North America, but overall, the field did not draw high numbers of interested researchers or students.

That’s not to say there weren’t exciting and important research discoveries occurring. Most research at that time was focused on the relevant functional properties of the microbes. This included carbohydrate and protein metabolism, flavor and texture development, tolerance to acid and salt, bacteriocin production, and bacteriophage resistance. Despite their importance, even fewer labs studied yeasts and molds, and the focus was on lactic acid bacteria.

Other researchers were more interested in the health benefits of fermented foods. Again, yogurt and other cultured dairy foods attracted the most interest. According to PubMed, there were about 70 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with yogurt as the intervention between 1981 and 2001. Over the next 20 years, there were more than 400 yogurt RCTs.

Fast forward a generation or two to 2021, and now fermented foods and beverages are all the rage. Certainly, having the molecular tools to sequence genomes and interrogate entire microbiomes of these foods has contributed to this new-found interest. Scanning the recent literature, there are dozens of published papers on microbiomes (and metabolomes) of dozens of fermented foods, including kombucha (and their associated symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast, known as SCOBYs), kefir, kimchi, beer (and barrels), cheese (and cheese rinds), wine, vinegar, miso and soy sauce, and dry fermented sausage.

It’s not just fermentation researchers who are interested in fermented foods. For ecologists and systems biologists, fermented foods serve as model systems to understand succession and community dynamics and how different groups of bacteria, yeast, and mold compete for resources.

Moreover, consumers can benefit when companies that manufacture fermented foods take advantage of these tools. The data obtained from fermented food microbiota analyses can help to correlate microbiome composition to quality attributes or identify potential sources of contamination.

Importantly, it is also now possible to screen microbiomes of fermented foods for gene clusters that encode potential health traits. Indeed, in addition to microbiome analyses of fermented foods, assessing their health benefits is now driving much of the research wave.

As mentioned above, more than 400 yogurt RCTs were published in the past two decades, but alas, there were far fewer RCTs reported for other fermented foods. This situation, however, is already changing. The widely reported fiber and fermented foods clinical trial led by Stanford researchers was published in Cell earlier this year and showed both microbiome and immune effects. Other RCTs are now in various stages, according to clinicaltrials.gov.

Twenty years ago, when ISAPP was formed, I suspect few of us would have imagined that the science of fermented foods would be an ISAPP priority. If you need proof that it is, look no further than the 2021 consensus paper on fermented foods. It remains one of the most highly viewed papers published by Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Further evidence of the broad interest in fermented foods was the recently held inaugural meeting of The Fermentation Association. Participants included members of the fermented foods industry, culture suppliers, nutritionists, chefs, food writers, journalists, retailers, scientists and researchers.

Several ISAPP board members also presented seminars, including this one who remains very happy to have made a career of studying fermented foods rather than the emetic response of microbial toxins.

ISAPP discussion group leads to new review paper providing a global perspective on the science of fermented foods and beverages

/in Consumer Blog, ISAPP Science Blog, News /by KC

By Kristina Campbell, MSc, Science & Medical Writer

Despite the huge variety of fermented foods that have originated in countries all over the world, there are relatively few published studies describing the microbiological similarities and differences between these very diverse foods and beverages. But in recent years, thanks to the availability of high throughput sequencing and other molecular technologies combined with new computational tools, analyses of the microbes that transform fresh substrates into fermented foods are becoming more frequent.

A group of researchers from North America, Europe, and Asia gathered at the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) 2018 conference in Singapore to discuss the science of fermented foods. Their goal was to provide a global perspective on fermented foods to account for the many  cultural, technological, and microbiological differences between east and west. This expert panel discussion culminated in a new review paper, published in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, entitled Fermented foods in a global age: East meets West.

Prof. Robert Hutkins, the paper’s lead author, says the diversity of panelists in the discussion group was an important aspect of this work. “Although we were all connected by our shared interests in fermented foods, each panelist brought a particular expertise along with different cultural backgrounds to our discussions,” he says. “Thus, one of the important outcomes, as noted in the published review paper, was how greatly historical and cultural factors, apart from microbiology, influence the types of fermented foods and beverages consumed around the world.”

The review captures the current state of knowledge on the variety of microbes that create fermented foods: whether these are starter cultures or microbes already present in the surrounding environment (i.e. the ‘authochthonous’ or ‘indigenous’ microbiota). The paper identifies general region-specific differences in the preparation of fermented foods, and the contrast between traditional and modern production of fermented foods—including the trade-offs between local and larger-scale manufacturing.

The authors of the article also took on the painstaking work of cataloging dozens of fermented foods from all over the world, including fermented milk products, fermented cereal foods, fermented vegetable products, fermented legume foods, fermented root crop foods, fermented meat foods, fermented fish products, and alcoholic beverages.

The expert panel discussions held every year at the ISAPP annual meeting provide a much-anticipated opportunity for globally leading scientists to come together to discuss issues relevant to scientific innovation and the direction of the field. This paper is an example of a concrete outcome of one of these discussion groups.

For more on fermented foods, see this ISAPP infographic or this educational video.

Highlighting the importance of lactic acid bacteria: An interview with Prof. Seppo Salminen

/in Consumer Blog, ISAPP Science Blog /by KC

By Kristina Campbell, M.Sc., science & medical writer

 

In a 2009 book called What on Earth Evolved?, British author Christopher Lloyd takes on the task of ranking the top 100 species that have influenced the planet throughout its evolutionary history.

What comes in at number 5, just slightly more influential than Homo sapiens? Lactobacilli, a diverse group of lactic-acid-producing bacteria.

The influential status of these bacteria on a global scale comes as no surprise to Prof. Seppo Salminen, ISAPP president and Professor at University of Turku (Finland), who has spent most of his career studying these microbes. He is the co-editor of the best-selling textbook Lactic Acid Bacteria: Microbiological and Functional Aspects, the fifth edition of which was released earlier this year. Salminen says the scientific community has come a long way in its understanding of lactic acid bacteria (LAB)—and in particular, lactobacilli.

Seppo Salminen at ISAPP annual meeting 2019

“If you think about the history of humankind, earlier on, more than 60% of the food supply was fermented,” explains Salminen. “On a daily basis, humans would have consumed many, many lactic acid bacteria.”

Yet 30 years ago when Salminen and his colleagues published the first edition of the textbook on lactic acid bacteria, they were working against perceptions that bacteria were universally harmful. The science on using live microorganisms to achieve health benefits was still emerging.

“Most people in food technology, they had learned how to kill bacteria but not how to keep them alive,” he explains. “They didn’t yet know how to add them to different formulations in foods and what sort of carrier they need. At that time, the safety and efficacy of probiotics was not well understood.”

Around ten years later, scientists came together to develop a definition of probiotics on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the WHO (FAO/WHO)—in a report that formed the basis of ISAPP Consensus meeting and today’s international consensus definition: “live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host”.

With probiotics having been more precisely defined, the following years were a time of rapid scientific progress in the field. Lactobacilli became the stars of the show, as research emerged on the benefits of various strains and combinations of strains in food science and medicine.

Fast forward to today, when rapidly expanding gut microbiome research adds another dimension to what we know about these bacteria. While lactic acid bacteria are still primarily of interest for the health benefits they impart, scientists can now also study their interactions with other microorganisms in the intestinal microbiome. In some cases, this kind of research may help uncover new mechanisms of action.

After everything Salminen and his textbook co-editors (Vinderola, Ouwehand, and von Wright) have learned about lactic acid bacteria over the past few decades, Salminen says there are two main reasons for the perennial importance of the bugs. “One is their importance in food fermentation, extending the shelf life of foods, making a kind of food processing or ‘agricultural processing’ possible. To make sauerkraut shelf-stable for weeks, or to make yogurt or cheese.”

The second reason, he says, relates to their benefits for the host. “Lactic acid bacteria, especially lactobacilli, reinforce intestinal integrity. So they protect us against pathogens; and sometimes against toxins and heavy metals by binding them away.”

He continues, “The more we know, the more we understand that LAB are needed. There are very specific strains that are helpful in different conditions for animal feeds or for clinical nutrition for infants, for example.” He says the knowledge is expanding at such a rapid pace that it may only be a few more years before the textbook he co-edited will need another edition.

Salminen is currently one of the world’s most cited probiotic researchers, and has diverse ongoing research projects related to digestive health, eczema, early life, and nutrition economics—but lactic acid bacteria are the thread that weaves everything together.

“I’m proud to be working on the fifth most important factor in human evolution,” he says.