About this Research Topic

Background

Our understanding of the potential function of plants and mushrooms as bioactive foods is developing rapidly. These are an important group of medicinal plants at the interface of food and medicine. It offers options for more precise nutritional interventions and for novel healthy food. These functional herbal medicines have demonstrated anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, antimicrobial, antioxidant and / or antiaging actions. In part based on the development of high-throughput sequencing technology, polysaccharides, flavonoids and polyphenols from such bioactive foods have been shown to exert their effect through direct and indirect mechanism of action mediated by gut microbiota. This is well documented in studies on ginseng. Considerable evidence has accumulated demonstrating that individual metabolites have hypoglycemic, lipid-lowering, immune regulation, antioxidant, and other effects.

Based on sophisticated medical theories under-going long-term repeated reassessment and reinterpretations, bioactive foods are widely reported across China, Japan, Korea, Europe, the Americas and in recent years have received considerable attention. Their nutritional, chemopreventive, and pharmacological properties highlight the beneficial health effects of such bioactive foods. However, although these resources have been greatly improved and widely accepted as potential functional medicine, there is still a lack of in-depth research on their pharmacological effects, potential preventive benefits and mechanisms.

Therefore, we encourage researchers to submit original research articles and comprehensive review articles on these resources, In addition, systematic reviews, method paperss, and opinions are welcome in this research topic. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• The isolation, identification, and biological activities of bioactive compounds, such as antibacterial, hypoglycemic, immunomodulatory, and antioxidant, and their potential effects on the intestinal microbiota.
• Evaluation of the methods of extraction, chemical structural, and their effect on probiotic microbes.
• Interaction between bioactives and gut microbiota, including both in vitro and in vivo studies
• Evaluation of traditional herb medicine treatment in preventive interventions

For manuscripts dealing with extracts obtained from a medicinal plant or a poly botanical drugs formulation, characterization of active chemical substances in natural compounds should be included (using analytical methods such as HPLC, LC-MS, GC-MS, etc.).
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). Please pay particular attention to the needs for a detailed description of the material under study and the importance of using pharmacologically relevant models. Purely in silico studies are not accepted. Chemical anti-oxidant assays are only acceptable as analytical tools and cannot be used to demonstrate ‘activity’.

Keywords: Herbal medicine, edible and medicinal mushrooms, intestinal flora

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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