Postbiotics as Dynamic Biological Molecules for Antimicrobial Activity: A Mini-Review

Postbiotics, products, or metabolites secreted by living probiotic bacteria like teichoic acids, peptides, enzymes, peptidoglycans, polysaccharides, organic acids, and external cell proteins are said to be produced during the bacterial fermentation process. However, postbiotics may provide immunization, antioxidant, prevents inflammation, low cholesterolemic, antimicrobial, antagonistic obesity, contrast hypertensive, and diabetic retinopathy impacts. In the current review, we attempt to display the antimicrobial performance of postbiotics. In this regard, we considered microbial strains used as postbiotic sources and postbiotics as antimicrobial agents in food products. All databases such as Science Direct, Scopus, Pub Med, and Google Scholar were examined using the following keywords: “postbiotics”, “Antimicrobial activity”, “Anti-inflammatory”, and “Low cholesterolemic”. Further studies demonstrated that probiotics are fed special forms of fiber (prebiotic) molecules, indicating substances known as postbiotics. Furthermore, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) like acetate, propionate, and butyrate are among the comprehensively investigated postbiotics. The extraction and purification of these compounds are carried out by means of dialysis, centrifugation, and freeze-drying techniques. According to the gained results, postbiotics assist in improving host health by increasing certain physiological functions. Furthermore, postbiotics can be used to increment the useful lifetime of different foods, like dairy products. It has also been shown that manually adding postbiotics to such products prevents the growth and proliferation of molds and thus the spoilage caused by them. This inhibitory effect indicates the antimicrobial properties of these compounds. Finally, we will see significant advances in the biological preservation of products, especially in the food industry.