Abstract

Traditional probiotics have a long history of use in foods, aiming to affect host health positively. Probiotics have been classified according to their formulation from the first to the fourth generation. A new family of probiotics, next-generation probiotics (NGPs), encompass bacteria discovered by new sequencing and bioinformatics technologies, as well as bacteria designed by synthetic biology. Most NGPs have been isolated from the gut microbiome and have no history of use. NGPs are required to improve the outcome of live biotherapeutic products for clinical use. Furthermore, probiotics' rational development is closely linked to the study of intestinal metabolic interactions such as cross-feeding. Advances in this area will allow microbial consortia development to be used as live biotherapeutics in functional foods or drugs.