The central role of microbiota: from environment to food production

A better understanding of the links between biodiversity, health and disease presents major opportunities for policy development, and can enhance our understanding of how health-focused measures affect biodiversity, and conservation measures affect health. Loss of biodiversity, habitat fragmentation and the loss of natural environments threaten the full range of life-supporting services provided by ecosystems at all levels of biodiversity, including species, genetic and ecosystem diversity. The disruption of ecosystem services has direct and indirect implications for public health, which are likely to exacerbate existing health inequities, whether through exposure to environmental hazards or through the loss of livelihoods. Moreover, the global composition of diet, from microbiome to nutrient, including life style, can affect every step from gene expression to protein synthesis until degradation, leading to profound modulation of metabolic functions. Proteomics can help the development of a novel sustainable personalized medicine through nutritional intervention. These studies will play an important role in solving major nutrition problem in human and animals, on the verge of one health approach,(www.onehealthinitiative.com) including obesity, metabolic and cardiovascular disease, cancer, ageing, allergy and foetal health and development. Profiling food, microbiome, and biomarkers of nutritional status from a proteomics point of view will potentially lead to a new pillar of personalized medicine. This include also a special focus to food safety, security and quality issues, providing new insights and technologies to ensure safety, starting from the study of microbiome and functional composition of microbial consortia. The definition of microbiota in animal species is useful also to increase food safety, and to counteract antibiotic resistance.