Microbiologists 2018

The Science of food

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Food Microbiology focuses on microbes having both beneficial and deleterious effects on the safety and quality of foods, thereby becoming a public concern. Food science includes microbial interactions with various foods and food chain environments including their adaptation and response mechanisms to food processing and handling stresses. Both microbial versatility and diversity can be exploited biotechnologically and industrially for the improvement of quality, safety and healthy processes of processed foods. An in-depth exploration of microbiology of fermented foods will prove commercially beneficial. Equally important is the fact that milk is an excellent source of nutrients for humans, and yet these same nutrients provide a most suitable medium for microbial growth and metabolism. Nutrigenomics focusses on identifying and understanding molecular-level interaction between nutrients and other dietary bioactives with the genome. Over the past few years, sequencing the entire genome of a single cell, a way to connect 16S genes to other functions encoded on the same strand of DNA, has become a viable option. Genomics and functional genomics of pathogenic and value adding technological microbes, molecular methods for the identification, typing and characterization of microbes and complex microbial communities, evolutionary dynamics of food-borne pathogenic microbes will be great use.

Development of probiotics, prebiotics and synbiotics as food supplements and their effects on human health including effects on host gut microbiota. Advancements of predictive microbiology and its application to food and process optimization and risk assessment are emerging.