Editorial: Role of Bifidobacteria in Human and Animal Health and Biotechnological Applications

Abstract

The gut microbiota is a dynamic community playing a key role in maintaining and supporting host health (Zheng et al., 2020). The interactions between the gut microbiota and the host are complex and perturbations by different causes may result in a variety of diseases including infections, inflammatory bowel disease, metabolic syndrome, neurodegenerative disorders and malignancy (Zheng et al., 2020). In humans, members of Bifidobacterium genus are among the most abundant colonizers of the gut of healthy infants (Milani et al., 2017) and persist throughout adulthood at lower relative abundance with a further reduction in the elderly (Arboleya et al., 2016).