The gut microbiota plays a prominent role in human health. Alterations in the gut microbiota are linked to the development of chronic diseases such as obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, metabolic syndrome, and certain cancers. We know that diet plays an important role to initiate, shape, and modulate the gut microbiota. Long‐term dietary patterns are shown to be closely related with the gut microbiota enterotypes, specifically long‐term consumption of carbohydrates (related to Prevotella abundance) or a diet rich in protein and animal fats (correlated to Bacteroides). Short‐term consumption of solely animal‐ or plant‐based diets have rapid and reproducible modulatory effects on the human gut microbiota. These alterations in microbiota profile by dietary alterations can be due to impact of different dietary macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein, and fat, which have diverse modulatory effects on gut microbial composition. Food‐derived phenolics, which encompass structural variants of flavonoids, hydroxybenzoic acids, hydroxycinnamic acids, coumarins, stilbenes, ellagitannins, and lignans can modify the gut microbiota. Gut microbes have been shown to act on dietary fibers and phenolics to produce functional metabolites that contribute to gut health. Here, we discuss recent studies on the impacts of phenolics and phenolic fiber‐rich foods on the human gut microbiota and provide an insight into potential synergistic roles between their bacterial metabolic products in the regulation of the intestinal microbiota.

Wine production is a complex process from the vineyard to the winery. On this journey, microbes play a decisive role. From the environment where the vines grow, encompassing soil, topography, weather and climate through to management practices in vineyards, the microbes present can potentially change the composition of wine. Introduction of grapes into the winery and the start of winemaking processes modify microbial communities further. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology have progressed our understanding of microbial communities associated with grapes and fermentations. We now have a finer appreciation of microbial diversity across wine producing regions to begin to understand how diversity can contribute to wine quality and style characteristics. In this review, we highlight literature surrounding wine-related microorganisms and how these affect factors interact with and shape microbial communities and contribute to wine quality. By discussing the geography, climate and soil of environments and viticulture and winemaking practices, we claim microbial biogeography as a new perspective to impact wine quality and regionality. Depending on geospatial scales, habitats, and taxa, the microbial community respond to local conditions. We discuss the effect of a changing climate on local conditions and how this may alter microbial diversity and thus wine style. With increasing understanding of microbial diversity and their effects on wine fermentation, wine production can be optimised with enhancing the expression of regional characteristics by understanding and managing the microbes present.

Angiotensin‐I‐converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory peptides are able to inhibit the activity of ACE, which is the key enzymatic factor mediating systemic hypertension. ACE‐inhibitory peptides can be obtained from edible proteins and have the function of antihypertension. The amino acid sequences and the secondary structures of ACE‐inhibitory peptides determine the inhibitory activities and stability. The resistance of ACE‐inhibitory peptides to digestive enzymes and peptidase affect their antihypertensive bioactivity in vivo. In this paper, the mechanism of ACE‐inhibition, sources of the inhibitory peptides, structure–activity relationships, stability during digestion, absorption and transportation of ACE‐inhibitory peptides, and consumption of ACE‐inhibitory peptides are reviewed, which provide guidance to the development of new functional foods and production of antihypertensive nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.

Microbial activity is an integral part of an agricultural ecosystem and influences the quality of agricultural commodities. Microbial ecology influences grapevine health and crop production, conversion of sugar to ethanol during fermentation, thus wine aroma and flavour. There are regionally differentiated microbial patterns in grapevines and must but how microbial patterns contribute to wine regional distinctiveness (terroir) at small scale (<100 km) is not well defined. Here we characterise fungal communities, yeast populations, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae populations during spontaneous fermentation using metagenomics and population genetics to investigate microbial distribution and fungal contributions to the resultant wine. We found differentiation of fungi, yeasts, and S. cerevisiae between geographic origins (estate/vineyard), with influences from the grape variety. Growth and dominance of S. cerevisiae during fermentation reshaped the fungal community and showed geographic structure at the strain level. Associations between fungal microbiota diversity and wine chemicals suggest that S. cerevisiae plays a primary role in determining wine aroma profiles at a sub-regional scale. The geographic distribution at scales of less than 12 km supports that differential microbial communities, including the dominant fermentative yeast S. cerevisiae can be distinct in a local setting. These findings provide further evidence for microbial contributions to wine terroir, and perspectives for sustainable agricultural practices to maintain microbial diversity and optimise fermentation function to craft beverage quality.

Background and Aims: As grapegrowers move to adapt to climate change, they need more detailed information on what cultivars to plant and where to plant them. The aims of this study were to understand how different cultivars in different regions are responding to changes in climate, in order to inform future cultivar selections. Methods and Results: Trends in the day of year maturity (DOYM) between 1999 and 2018 were analysed for 23 grape cultivars (covering at least 7 years) and four Victorian vineyard regions against vintage year, seasonal growing degree day (GDD Sep-Mar ) and Spring Index. In most cases there were significant trends in DOYM advancement as a function of GDD Sep-Mar and spring index. Temporal advancement of DOYM was more variable. One cultivar showed a significant advancement at two of three sites and another showed a significant delay. Different cultivars advanced DOYM at significantly different rates at a given site, later ripening cultivars advanced DOYM faster than earlier ripening cultivars and for a cultivar grown across several sites, the DOYM advancement was faster at cooler sites. Conclusions: Grapevine cultivars respond to warming temperature differently and the advancement of grape maturity is predicted to slow as temperature further increases. Significance of the Study: The study showed diversity in the phenological response of cultivars to temperature, which may be utilised to better adapt to climate change.

Beer is one of the most popular beverages worldwide. As a product of variable agricultural ingredients and processes, beer has high molecular complexity. We used DIA/SWATH-MS to investigate the proteomic complexity and diversity of 23 commercial Australian beers. While the overall complexity of the beer proteome was modest, with contributions from barley and yeast proteins, we uncovered a very high diversity of post-translational modifications (PTMs), especially proteolysis, glycation, and glycosylation. Proteolysis was widespread throughout barley proteins, but showed clear site-specificity. Oligohexose modifications were common on lysines in barley proteins, consistent with glycation by maltooligosaccharides released from starch during malting or mashing. O-glycosylation consistent with oligomannose was abundant on secreted yeast glycoproteins. We developed and used data analysis pipelines to efficiently extract and quantify site-specific PTMs from SWATH-MS data, and showed incorporating these features into proteomic analyses extended analytical precision. We found that the key differentiator of the beer glyco/proteome was the brewery, with beer from independent breweries having a distinct profile to beer from multinational breweries. Within a given brewery, beer styles also had distinct glyco/proteomes. Targeting our analyses to beers from a single brewery, Newstead Brewing Co., allowed us to identify beer style-specific features of the glyco/proteome. Specifically, we found that proteins in darker beers tended to have low glycation and high proteolysis. Finally, we objectively quantified features of foam formation and stability, and showed that these quality properties correlated with the concentration of abundant surface-active proteins from barley and yeast.

This article has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology ABSTRACT Environmentally acquired microbial symbionts could contribute to host adaptation to local conditions like vertically transmitted symbionts do. This scenario necessitates symbionts to have different effects in different environments. We investigated this idea in Drosophila melanogaster, a species which communities of bacterial symbionts vary greatly among environments. We isolated four bacterial strains isolated from the feces of a D. melanogaster laboratory strain and tested their effects in two conditions: the ancestral environment (i.e. the laboratory medium) and a new environment (i.e. fresh fruit with live yeast). All bacterial effects on larval and adult traits differed among environments, ranging from very beneficial to marginally deleterious. The joint analysis of larval development speed and adult size further shows bacteria affected developmental plasticity more than resource acquisition. This effect was largely driven by the contrasted effects of the bacteria in each environment. Our study illustrates that understanding D. melanogaster symbiotic interactions in the wild will necessitate working in ecologically realistic conditions. Besides, context-dependent effects of symbionts, and their influence on host developmental plasticity, shed light on how environmentally acquired symbionts may contribute to host evolution.

Five Vitis vinifera L. cultivars Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris at different E-L development stages were harvested in two experimental vintages. Temperature and rainfall data of the growing period were obtained from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology. Free terpene concentrations of all harvested grape samples were analysed using HS-SPME-GC-MS. One-way ANNOVA was performed to evaluate the significance of changes in terpene concentrations at different maturation stages. More analysis of the data is provided in “Free terpene evolution during the berry maturation of five Vitis vinifera L. cultivars” [1].