Lactic acid bacteria: A cell factory for delivering functional biomolecules in dairy products

The functional food and nutraceuticals market is experiencing an increasing trend worldwide. Nutraceuticals refer to food compounds in the diet, or food supplements, able to sustain a physiological benefit or the prevention and/or treatment of a disease or disorder. In this review, we present an update on the knowledge on the contribute of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) fermenting milk and other food substrates in the production of bioactive peptides, with an overview on the different type of peptides and their activities, and also discuss the potential of LAB strains in the biosynthesis of vitamins, in the ability to enrich the foods with minerals, and preserve rare minerals by metal-binding peptides, and in the transformation of unsaturated fatty acids into CLA species.