Bacteria as vitamin suppliers to their host: a gut microbiota perspective.

By J. LeBlanc, C. Milani, G. S. de Giori, F. Sesma, D. van Sinderen, M. Ventura. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 2013

1,414 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Food-related lactic acid bacteria (LAB) as well as human gut commensals such as bifidobacteria can de novo synthesize and supply vitamins. This is important since humans lack the biosynthetic capacity for most vitamins and these must thus be provided exogenously. Although vitamins are present in a variety of foods, deficiencies still occur, mainly due to malnutrition as a result of insufficient food intake and because of poor eating habits. Fermented milks with high levels of B-group vitamins (such as folate and riboflavin) can be produced by LAB-promoted and possibly bifidobacteria-promoted biosynthesis. Moreover, certain strains of LAB produce the complex vitamin cobalamin (or vitamin B12). In this review, fermented foods with elevated levels of B-group vitamins produced by LAB used as starter cultures will be covered. In addition, genetic abilities for vitamin biosynthesis by selected human gut commensals will be discussed.

Subfields: Food Science, Molecular Biology, Rheumatology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/687f9f95b25208b036405fab94e80c6572ce517a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Food Science

1. H. Smidt
2. J. LeBlanc
3. Erwin G. Zoetendal
4. K. Scott

In Molecular Biology

1. H. Smidt
2. Almut Heinken
3. Ellen E. Blaak
4. G. Gibson
5. Ines Thiele
6. G. A. Weiss
7. John Penders
8. T. Hennet

Citations in the corpus

• Gut microbiota functions: metabolism of nutrients and other food components (2017, background): “[55] explored the metabolic potential of gut microbial sequences from two subjects and found that their microbiomes were enriched for a variety of clustered orthologous groups (COGs) involved in the synthesis of deoxyxylulose-5-phosphate, a precursor of thiamine and pyridoxal.”
• Intestinal microbiome of poultry and its interaction with host and diet (2014, background): “Gut microbiome of poultry may also serve as a vitamin (especially B vitamins) supplier to its host.(6,17) Similar as bacterial protein, most of the vitamins synthesized by gut bacteria are excreted with feces because they cannot be absorbed in the cecum.”
• Beneficial effects on host energy metabolism of short-chain fatty acids and vitamins produced by commensal and probiotic bacteria (2017, background): “The genetic and biochemical pathways of these B group vitamins biosynthesis is well known [2] and will not be discussed in this review, but it is important to state that regardless of their origin, certain strains can produce elevated concentrations of vitamins.”
• Gut microbiome stability and resilience: elucidating the response to perturbations in order to modulate gut health (2020, background): “84 Competition for minerals, which are required cofactors for several human and microbial metabolic processes, can also determine the species able to grow and persist in the gut ecosystem.”
• Mechanisms and consequences of intestinal dysbiosis (2017, background): “The trillions of microbes colonizing the gastrointestinal tract influence local and systemic processes such as nutrient transformation [1], vitamin supply [2], maturation of mucosal immunity [3, 4], gut-to-brain communication [5], and even tumor progression [6].”
• Riboflavin producing lactic acid bacteria as a biotechnological strategy to obtain bio-enriched soymilk (2014, background): “Some LAB are able to synthesize B vitamins such as riboflavin (LeBlanc et al., 2013) which is the precursor of FMN and FAD which are involved in the oxidation of succinic acid to fumaric acid in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (Sauer, Cameron, & Bailey, 1998), participates in carbohydrate metabolism, a”