Vitali Francesco, Zinno Paola, Schifano Emily, Gori Agnese, Costa Ana, De Filippo Carlotta, Koroušić Seljak Barbara, Panov Panče, Devirgiliis Chiara, Cavalieri Duccio
Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology (IBBA), National Research Council (CNR), Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, CREA (Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi dell'Economia Agraria), Via di Lanciola 12/A, 50125 Florence, Italy.
Foods. 2022 Jun 29;11(13):1939. doi: 10.3390/foods11131939.
Food ontologies are acquiring a central role in human nutrition, providing a standardized terminology for a proper description of intervention and observational trials. In addition to bioactive molecules, several fermented foods, particularly dairy products, provide the host with live microorganisms, thus carrying potential "genetic/functional" nutrients. To date, a proper ontology to structure and formalize the concepts used to describe fermented foods is lacking. Here we describe a semantic representation of concepts revolving around what consuming fermented foods entails, both from a technological and health point of view, focusing actions on kefir and Parmigiano Reggiano, as representatives of fresh and ripened dairy products. We included concepts related to the connection of specific microbial taxa to the dairy fermentation process, demonstrating the potential of ontologies to formalize the various gene pathways involved in raw ingredient transformation, connect them to resulting metabolites, and finally to their consequences on the fermented product, including technological, health and sensory aspects. Our work marks an improvement in the ambition of creating a harmonized semantic model for integrating different aspects of modern nutritional science. Such a model, besides formalizing a multifaceted knowledge, will be pivotal for a rich annotation of data in public repositories, as a prerequisite to generalized meta-analysis.
食物本体论在人类营养领域正发挥着核心作用，为恰当描述干预试验和观察性试验提供标准化术语。除了生物活性分子外，一些发酵食品，特别是乳制品，为宿主提供活的微生物，因此携带潜在的“基因/功能性”营养素。迄今为止，缺乏一个合适的本体论来构建和形式化用于描述发酵食品的概念。在此，我们从技术和健康角度描述围绕食用发酵食品所涉及概念的语义表示，重点关注开菲尔和帕尔马干酪，作为新鲜和成熟乳制品的代表。我们纳入了与特定微生物分类群与乳制品发酵过程的关联相关的概念，展示了本体论在形式化原料转化中涉及的各种基因途径、将它们与产生的代谢物联系起来以及最终与它们对发酵产品的影响（包括技术、健康和感官方面）的潜力。我们的工作标志着在创建一个用于整合现代营养科学不同方面的统一语义模型的目标上取得了进展。这样一个模型，除了形式化多方面的知识外，对于公共知识库中数据的丰富注释至关重要，这是进行广义荟萃分析的先决条件。
