Foodomics in microbiological investigations

• Food microbiology is the study of microorganisms and food.
• Foodomics is a new comprehensive approach for food microbiology.
• Genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics are used in foodomics.

Microorganisms play a key role in many processes involved environmental safety and human health. Since the crucial roles in the success and safety of food industry, microbial functions in food are increasingly attracted researchers’ interest. However, the previous food microbiological techniques are labor intensive, time consuming, and costly. The emerged foodomics approaches that integrated advanced high-throughput analytical techniques and bioinformatics tools have been used in modern food microbiology. They have achieved success in revealing many fundamental processes driven by both pathogens and commensals in food. This review focuses on the application of foodomics in food microbiology. The advantages and drawbacks of foodomics methods were also discussed.