This Research Topic is focused on the structural, functional, and nutritional perspectives intended to advance essential knowledge and exploration of the recent applications of probiotics, and probiotic-related concepts such as prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, paraprobiotics in the food, and pharmaceutical industries. The health benefits for the host include: inhibiting gastrointestinal pathogens by modifying their immunogenicity and enhancing the degradation of enteric antigens, improving barrier protection, prevention of mucosal adherence, and intestinal disorders such as lactose intolerance, inflammatory bowel disease, constipation, anti-mutagenic, anti-cholesterol activity, and contribution to immune function. Probiotic products are still a technological challenge, prompting the food industry to find new alternatives for incorporating these probiotics in food. The safety of live microorganisms should be taken into consideration, particularly when administered to the elderly and immunodeficient individuals. In order to increase their shelf life, the use of prebiotics such as inulin, fructooligosaccharides, galactooligosaccharides, etc., has been defined as a very interesting and promising approach.

The so-called synbiotics, in addition to encouraging the enhancement of probiotics survivability during production and storage, are also a strategy for food functionalization. In this regard, microencapsulation seems to be one of the most promising methods to protect probiotics against adverse environmental conditions by entrapment within a matrix of carrier agents. By supplementing the probiotic bacteria in food, it is important to consider numerous aspects, including their effective health benefits, sensory properties, shelf-life, and survival in the gastrointestinal tract. Recently, there is an increasing interest in the development of new products based on non-viable probiotics such as paraprobiotics and postbiotics. In particular, paraprobiotics, defined as “inactivated microbial cells (non-viable) that confer a health benefit to the consumer,” have the capability to regulate the adaptive and innate immune systems, exhibit anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative and antioxidant properties, and exert antagonistic effects against pathogens. In addition, paraprobiotics can exhibit enhanced safety, assure technological and practical benefits, and can also be used in products suitable for people with weak immunity and the elderly. These features offer an important opportunity to prompt the market with novel functional foods or nutraceuticals that are safer and more stable. Thus, it is essential to develop probiotic-based functional foods for food applications by using modern approaches. In addition, the structural and functional characterization of the pre-pro-syn-para-postbiotics related products particularly paraprobiotic and postbiotics are not well studied.

This Research Topic collection welcomes important research reports on the development of novel functional foods related to probiotics investigating the structural, technological, and functional aspects and their effects on the gut microbiome, which will further help in understanding their nutritional and functional aspects for a healthy diet. This Research Topic seeks an updated and new base of knowledge on structural chemistry, functionality, nutraceuticals, mechanism of action, encapsulation strategies, and its applications in food systems. Probiotics exert various health benefits by modulating the gut microbiome; however, techno-functional limitations such as viability control have hindered their full potential in the food and pharmaceutical sectors. Hence, there is a focus on improving the viability of probiotics by new technological advancements. Furthermore, there is increasing attention towards non-viable paraprobiotics and/or probiotics derived biomolecules, so-called postbiotics.

This Research Topic provides an overview of central issues on the probiotic related functional foods and pharmaceutical products and to highlight/address the urgent need for further studies aimed at assessing the safety and efficacy of these products and their mechanisms of action. It aims to highlight the recent advances towards developing pre to postbiotics related products for boosting the health and immune systems.

In this Research Topic, we welcome submissions of original research articles, reviews, mini reviews, letters, brief research report/data report, perspective, and communications related to the research theme.
Potential research topics include but are not limited to:
• Application of prebiotics, probiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, and paraprobiotics in food systems and pharma sectors for the development of functional foods and nutraceuticals.
• Paraprobiotics: inactivation techniques, evaluation of their effects/ benefits on hosts, mechanism of action, and its applications.
• Postbiotics: preparation, purification, identification, mechanism of action, potential health effects, and its applications.
• Extensive characterization of probiotic, prebiotic and postbiotic compounds using various emerging techniques.
• Emerging technologies for safe delivery of probiotics for various health benefits.
• Mechanism of action of probiotics, prebiotics, paraprobiotics and postbiotics
• Effect of processing techniques on the structure and function of prebiotics, probiotics, paraprobiotics and postbiotics.
• Prebiotics-postbiotics based functional food and pharmaceutical products: structure, function, and technical/activity relationship.
• Paraprobiotics and postbiotics – chemistry, and function/benefits/activity relationship.
• Novel analytical techniques in the structure elucidation of food bioactives.

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Frontiers in Nutrition

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