Probiotic reverse engineering: choose your mechanism first then your strain

Failure to effectively prove cause and effect between taking probiotics and improvements in recognised markers of disease has greatly hindered the acceptability of probiotic health claims. • One reason for this may be poor probiotic selection. Probiotic strains have not always been selected on the basis of specific health related mechanisms. • Examples of probiotics first selected for bile salt hydrolase activities or gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) production are proving exceptions however, and are showing that rational design of probiotic strains capable of modulating host physiological function is possible. • This presentation will discuss the merits of probiotic reverse engineering, selecting probiotic strains with very specific phenotypes capable altering target mammalian physiological processes.