Conclusions
The genomic characterization of lactic acid bacteria has rocketed
and presently over 25 complete and 100 or so nearly com- plete genomes are available.
Many of these derive from strains that serve as scientific paradigms
and have reached the market place as the industrial use of lactic acid bacteria is worth over a 100 Billion Euro per year.
Several paradigm lactic acid bacteria have been presented here with their most salient features that include genome based modeling as well as systems and synthetic biology approaches.
The field of lactic acid bacteria is developing really rapidly and an impressive set of discoveries have been made that had not been anticipated ten years ago [134].
When considering the large amount of knowledge available,
the logic step is to further improve existing products and start developing NGT products for food,
pharma and white biotechnology.
It is an expectation and desire that this review contributes to these exciting new developments
by inspiring new scien- tific talents to do so.