Fermented foods as experimentally tractable microbial ecosystems

Benjamin E Wolfe; Rachel J Dutton

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.034

Fermented foods as experimentally tractable microbial ecosystems

Cell. 2015 Mar 26;161(1):49-55. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.034.

Authors

Benjamin E Wolfe¹, Rachel J Dutton²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
² FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: rdutton@cgr.harvard.edu.

PMID: 25815984
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.034

Abstract

Microbial communities of fermented foods have provided humans with tools for preservation and flavor development for thousands of years. These simple, reproducible, accessible, culturable, and easy-to-manipulate systems also provide opportunities for dissecting the mechanisms of microbial community formation. Fermented foods can be valuable models for processes in less tractable microbiota.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Ecosystem*
Fermentation*
Food Microbiology*
Microbial Interactions
Taste