ArticleNature communications2023
Microbial interactions shape cheese flavour formation.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review on kefir beverages from milk and water: health benefits, processing and applications.Food science of animal resources · 2026Review
- Niche Construction: A Rational Engineering Strategy for Regulating Microbial Assembly to Enhance Flavor and Bioactivity of Fermented Foods.Comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety · 2026Review
- Diverse Microbial Communities Assemble on Both Recalcitrant and Labile Carbon Sources.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Cheese and Its Microbes Under the Light of One Health-A Comprehensive Review.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Genome-Scale Metabolic Models Guided Improvement of Fermented Milk Quality and Flavor byFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A microbiome catalog of Chinese traditional artisanal cheeses provides insights into functional and microbial diversity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Comprehensive insights into the mechanism of flavor formation inFood chemistry: X · 2026Article
- Microbial biotechnology meets ecological theory: a unified framework to design industrial microbial consortia.International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology · 2026Review
- Analysis of Microbial Interactions During the Production of Chinese Ethnic Fermented Foods.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Lactobacilli biology, applications and host interactions.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Genomic insights into adaptative traits of phyllosphere yeasts.Environmental microbiome · 2026Article
- Shotgun metagenomic and phenotypic characterization of indigenous lactic acid bacteria from raw milk artisanal cheeses: metagenomic functional insight and starter culture traits.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Microbial Omics Analysis for Multispecies Symbioses in Specialty Fermentations and Nonfood Fermentations.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Genome-scale metabolic modelling of human gut microbes to inform rational community design.Gut microbes · 2025Article
- Metabolic modeling of microbial communities in the chicken ceca reveals a landscape of competition and co-operation.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Multi-Omics Insights into Microbial Interactions and Fermented Food Quality.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Systematically exploring and evaluating core fungal composition and their flavor profile in fermented grains of Jiang-flavor baijiu.Food chemistry: X · 2025Article
- Potential and challenges for application of microbiomes in agriculture.The Plant cell · 2025Review
- Controlling metabolic stability of food microbiome for stable indigenous liquor fermentation.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Exploring the Impact of Altitude on Bacterial Communities in Informally Produced Artisanal Colonial Cheeses: Insights from 16S rRNA Gene Sequencing.Microorganisms · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Cheese fermentation and flavour formation are the result of complex biochemical reactions driven by the activity of multiple microorganisms. Here, we studied the roles of microbial interactions in flavour formation in a year-long Cheddar cheese making process, using a commercial starter culture containing Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactococcus strains. By using an experimental strategy whereby certain strains were left out from the starter culture, we show that S. thermophilus has a crucial role in boosting Lactococcus growth and shaping flavour compound profile. Controlled milk fermentations with systematic exclusion of single Lactococcus strains, combined with genomics, genome-scale metabolic modelling, and metatranscriptomics, indicated that S. thermophilus proteolytic activity relieves nitrogen limitation for Lactococcus and boosts de novo nucleotide biosynthesis. While S. thermophilus had large contribution to the flavour profile, Lactococcus cremoris also played a role by limiting diacetyl and acetoin formation, which otherwise results in an off-flavour when in excess. This off-flavour control could be attributed to the metabolic re-routing of citrate by L. cremoris from diacetyl and acetoin towards α-ketoglutarate. Further, closely related Lactococcus lactis strains exhibited different interaction patterns with S. thermophilus, highlighting the significance of strain specificity in cheese making. Our results highlight the crucial roles of competitive and cooperative microbial interactions in shaping cheese flavour profile.
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