Cheese is a fermented dairy product, harboring diverse microbial communities (microbiota) that change over time and vary depending on the type of cheese and their respective starter and adjunct cultures. These microorganisms play a crucial role in determining the flavor, quality and safety of the final product. Exploring the composition of cheese microbiota and the underlying molecular mechanisms involved in cheese ripening has been the subject of many studies. Recent advances in next generation sequencing (NGS) methods and the development of sophisticated bioinformatics tools have provided deeper insights into the composition and potential functionality of cheese microbiota far beyond the information provided by culture-dependent methods. These advances, which include rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and metagenomics, have been complemented and expanded in recent years by the application of metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics and metabolomics. This paper reviews studies in which application of these meta-omics technologies has led to a better understanding of the microbial composition and functionality of cheese and highlights opportunities by which the integration of outputs from diverse multi-omics analytical platforms (cheesomics) could be used in the future to advance our knowledge of the cheese ripening process and identify biomarkers for predicting cheese flavor, quality, texture and safety, and bioactive metabolites with potential to influence human health.

奶酪是一种发酵的乳制品，具有多种微生物群落（微生物群），这些微生物群落会随时间而变化，并随奶酪的类型以及它们各自的起始和辅助培养而变化。这些微生物在决定最终产品的风味，质量和安全性方面起着至关重要的作用。探索奶酪微生物群的组成以及奶酪成熟中涉及的潜在分子机制已成为许多研究的主题。下一代测序（NGS）方法的最新进展以及先进的生物信息学工具的发展提供了对奶酪微生物群组成和潜在功能的更深入的了解，远远超出了依赖于培养物的方法所提供的信息。这些进展包括rRNA基因扩增子测序和宏基因组学，近年来，通过元转录组学，元蛋白质组学和代谢组学的应用，已经得到了补充和扩展。本文回顾了这些元组学技术的应用已使人们对奶酪的微生物组成和功能有了更好的了解的研究，并重点介绍了可将来自各种多元组学分析平台（cheesomics）的输出进行整合的机会。未来，我们将加深对奶酪成熟过程的了解，并确定可预测奶酪风味，质量，质地和安全性以及可能影响人类健康的生物活性代谢物的生物标志物。