Rational use of prebiotics for gut microbiota alterations: Specific bacterial phylotypes and related mechanisms

Prebiotics play a widely recognized role in the regulation of intestinal microbiota, but most related studies have not been explored beyond the genus level. In recent years, some newly publicized findings have opened a window of opportunity regarding the dietary tuning of colonization by specific groups of gut bacteria. For example, seaweed polysaccharides were shown to enrich specific Bacteroides spp., while galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) could specifically enrich certain strains of Bifidobacterium adolescentis. This review was written with the aim of collecting all available studies of the effects of prebiotics on gut microbiota that attempted to mine the enriching effects of these prebiotics on bacteria at the species or strain level, analyze the possible underlying mechanisms and finally use and/or design tailored prebiotics for the directional enrichment of specific gut bacterial populations. This review also addresses the updated definition evolution of prebiotics considering the important revisions to definitions made by field experts.