Multi-omics characterization of the microbial populations and chemical space composition of a water kefir fermentation.

In recent years, the popularity of fermented foods has strongly increased based on their proven health benefits and the adoption of new trends among consumers. One of these health-promoting products is water kefir, which is a fermented sugary beverage based on kefir grains (symbiotic colonies of yeast, lactic acid and acetic acid bacteria). According to previous knowledge and the uniqueness of each water kefir fermentation, the following project aimed to explore the microbial and chemical composition of a water kefir fermentation and its microbial consortium, through the integration of culture-dependent methods, compositional metagenomics, and untargeted metabolomics.