Untargeted metabolomics approach: toward new understanding of cheese ripening

Metabolomics approaches, particularly those based on mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, are being developed and appear as a must in the modern food science and microbiology research to investigate food quality and safety. Cheese ripening mechanisms has always been investigated with targeted approaches. Our objective was to assess the relevance of untargeted metabolomics to explore cheese ripening. MS metabolic fingerprints were found to differ significantly depending on the incubation time, pointing out the capacity of this approach to study the evolution of bacterial metabolism within cheese. Forty-five metabolites were identified on the basis of an internal data bank. Variations over time of a large diversity of well-known cheese metabolites such as 12 amino acids and 25 volatile compounds, but also less studied ones such as 4 vitamins and L-carnitine were highlighted. From now on, untargeted metabolomics offer new perspectives for the understanding of cheese ripening mechanisms.