Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are present in foods, the environment and the animal gut, although fermented foods (FFs) are recognized as the primary niche of LAB activity. Several LAB strains have been studied for their health-promoting properties and are employed as probiotics. FFs are recognized for their potential beneficial effects, which we review in this article. They are also an important source of LAB, which are ingested daily upon FF consumption. In this review, we describe the diversity of LAB and their occurrence in food as well as the gut microbiome. We discuss the opportunities to study LAB diversity and functional properties by considering the availability of both genomic and metagenomic data in public repositories, as well as the different latest computational tools for data analysis. In addition, we discuss the role of LAB as potential probiotics by reporting the prevalence of key genomic features in public genomes and by surveying the outcomes of LAB use in clinical trials involving human subjects. Finally, we highlight the need for further studies aimed at improving our knowledge of the link between LAB-fermented foods and the human gut from the perspective of health promotion.

中文翻译：

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食物-肠道轴：乳酸菌及其与食物、肠道微生物组和人类健康的联系。

乳酸菌 (LAB) 存在于食品、环境和动物肠道中，尽管发酵食品 (FF) 被认为是 LAB 活性的主要利基。一些 LAB 菌株的健康促进特性已被研究并被用作益生菌。FF 因其潜在的有益影响而受到认可，我们将在本文中对此进行回顾。它们也是 LAB 的重要来源，每天在食用 FF 时摄入 LAB。在这篇综述中，我们描述了乳酸菌的多样性及其在食物和肠道微生物组中的存在。我们通过考虑公共存储库中基因组和宏基因组数据的可用性以及用于数据分析的不同最新计算工具来讨论研究 LAB 多样性和功能特性的机会。此外，我们通过报告公共基因组中关键基因组特征的流行情况以及调查 LAB 在涉及人类受试者的临床试验中使用的结果，讨论了 LAB 作为潜在益生菌的作用。最后，我们强调需要进行进一步的研究，旨在从健康促进的角度提高我们对乳酸菌发酵食品与人类肠道之间联系的了解。