SPME-based mobile field device for active sampling of volatiles.

Monitoring plant volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles can reveal information regarding the health state of the plant, such as whether it is nutrient stressed or diseased. Typically, plant VOC sampling uses sampling enclosures. Enclosures require time and equipment which are not easily adapted to high throughput sampling in field environments.

Exhaled breath condensate methods adapted from human studies using longitudinal metabolomics for predicting early health alterations in dolphins.

Monitoring health conditions is essential to detect early asymptomatic stages of a disease. To achieve this, blood, urine and breath samples are commonly used as a routine clinical diagnostic. These samples offer the opportunity to detect specific metabolites related to diseases and provide a better understanding of their development.

Analytical methodologies for broad metabolite coverage of exhaled breath condensate.

Breath analysis has been gaining popularity as a non-invasive technique that is amenable to a broad range of medical uses. One of the persistent problems hampering the wide application of the breath analysis method is measurement variability of metabolite abundances stemming from differences in both sampling and analysis methodologies used in various studies. Mass spectrometry has been a method of choice for comprehensive metabolomic analysis.

Noninvasive Respiratory Metabolite Analysis Associated with Clinical Disease in Cetaceans: A Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Study.

Health assessments of wild cetaceans can be challenging due to the difficulty of gaining access to conventional diagnostic matrices of blood, serum and others. While the noninvasive detection of metabolites in exhaled breath could potentially help to address this problem, there exists a knowledge gap regarding associations between known disease states and breath metabolite profiles in cetaceans. This technology was applied to the largest marine oil spill in U.

A rabbit model for assessment of volatile metabolite changes observed from skin: a pressure ulcer case study.

Human skin presents a large, easily accessible matrix that is potentially useful for diagnostic applications based on whole body metabolite changes-some of which will be volatile and detected using minimally invasive tools. Unfortunately, identifying skin biomarkers that can be reliably linked to a particular condition is challenging due to a large variability of genetics, dietary intake, and environmental exposures within human populations. This leads to a paucity of clinically validated volatile skin biomarker compounds.

Human breath metabolomics using an optimized non-invasive exhaled breath condensate sampler.

Exhaled breath condensate (EBC) analysis is a developing field with tremendous promise to advance personalized, non-invasive health diagnostics as new analytical instrumentation platforms and detection methods are developed. Multiple commercially-available and researcher-built experimental samplers are reported in the literature. However, there is very limited information available to determine an effective breath sampling approach, especially regarding the dependence of breath sample metabolomic content on the collection device design and sampling methodology.

Supervised Semi-Automated Data Analysis Software for Gas Chromatography / Differential Mobility Spectrometry (GC/DMS) Metabolomics Applications.

Modern differential mobility spectrometers (DMS) produce complex and multi-dimensional data streams that allow for near-real-time or post-hoc chemical detection for a variety of applications. An active area of interest for this technology is metabolite monitoring for biological applications, and these data sets regularly have unique technical and data analysis end user requirements. While there are initial publications on how investigators have individually processed and analyzed their DMS metabolomic data, there are no user-ready commercial or open source software packages that are easily used for this purpose.

Enhanced non-invasive respiratory sampling from bottlenose dolphins for breath metabolomics measurements.

Chemical analysis of exhaled breath metabolites is an emerging alternative to traditional clinical testing for many physiological conditions. The main advantage of breath analysis is its inherent non-invasive nature and ease of sample collection. Therefore, there exists a great interest in further development of this method for both humans and animals.

Identification of fungal metabolites from inside Gallus gallus domesticus eggshells by non-invasively detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The natural porosity of eggshells allows hen eggs to become contaminated with microbes from the nesting material and environment. Those microorganisms can later proliferate due to the humid ambient conditions while stored in refrigerators, causing a potential health hazard to the consumer. The microbes' volatile organic compounds (mVOCs) are released by both fungi and bacteria.

Coupling a branch enclosure with differential mobility spectrometry to isolate and measure plant volatiles in contained greenhouse settings.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are off-gassed from all living organisms and represent end products of metabolic pathways within the system. In agricultural systems, these VOCs can provide important information on plant health and can ordinarily be measured non-invasively without harvesting tissue from the plants. Previously we reported a portable gas chromatography/differential mobility spectrometry (GC/DMS) system that could distinguish VOC profiles of pathogen-infected citrus from healthy trees before visual symptoms of disease were present.

Metabolite content profiling of bottlenose dolphin exhaled breath.

Changing ocean health and the potential impact on marine mammal health are gaining global attention. Direct health assessments of wild marine mammals, however, is inherently difficult. Breath analysis metabolomics is a very attractive assessment tool due to its noninvasive nature, but it is analytically challenging.

Analysis of volatile compounds in exhaled breath condensate in patients with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Background: An important challenge to pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) diagnosis and treatment is early detection of occult pulmonary vascular pathology. Symptoms are frequently confused with other disease entities that lead to inappropriate interventions and allow for progression to advanced states of disease. There is a significant need to develop new markers for early disease detection and management of PAH.

Detection of Huanglongbing disease using differential mobility spectrometry.

The viability of the multibillion dollar global citrus industry is threatened by the "green menace", citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing, HLB), caused by the bacterial pathogen Candidatus Liberibacter. The long asymptomatic stage of HLB makes it challenging to detect emerging regional infections early to limit disease spread. We have established a novel method of disease detection based on chemical analysis of released volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that emanate from infected trees.

Diabetes and the metabolic syndrome: possibilities of a new breath test in a dolphin model.

Diabetes type-2 and the metabolic syndrome are prevalent in epidemic proportions and result in significant co-morbid disease. Limitations in understanding of dietary effects and cholesterol metabolism exist. Current methods to assess diabetes are essential, though many are invasive; for example, blood glucose and lipid monitoring require regular finger sticks and blood draws.

A mobile instrumentation platform to distinguish airway disorders.

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are distinct but clinically overlapping airway disorders which often create diagnostic and therapeutic dilemmas. Current strategies to discriminate these diseases are limited by insensitivity and poor performance due to biologic variability. We tested the hypothesis that a gas chromatograph/differential mobility spectrometer (GC/DMS) sensor could distinguish between clinically well-defined groups with airway disorders based on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) obtained from exhaled breath.

Optimization by means of responses surface of an analytical sequence using a sequential injection system.

An experimental design method was applied to determine the optimum working conditions for sequential injection analysis (SIA) to obtain second-order data that will be treated using multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR-ALS). The critical step is to design an analytical sequence that provides relevant information. This sequence depends on parameters related to the system, the chemical reaction, and the chemometric treatment of the data.

Gaining and losing the thermophilic adaptation in prokaryotes.

We studied the evolution of thermophily in prokaryotes using the phylogenetic relationships between 279 bacteria and archaea and their thermophilic amino acid composition signature. Our findings suggest several examples in which the capacity of thermophilic adaptation has been gained or lost over relatively short evolutionary periods throughout the evolution of prokaryotes.

Use of a multi-way method to analyze the amino acid composition of a conserved group of orthologous proteins in prokaryotes.

Background: Amino acids in proteins are not used equally. Some of the differences in the amino acid composition of proteins are between species (mainly due to nucleotide composition and lifestyle) and some are between proteins from the same species (related to protein function, expression or subcellular localization, for example). As several factors contribute to the different amino acid usage in proteins, it is difficult both to analyze these differences and to separate the contributions made by each factor.