A review of advances and new developments in the analysis of biological volatile organic compounds

Biological volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are interlinked to biological metabolism and bacterial populations localized on the surfaces of biological samples. The characteristics of biological VOCs at different physiological status or metabolism phases are various, which contain crucial bio-information. In this review, the significance of the study of biological VOCs was introduced, and crucial techniques greatly influencing the investigation were summarized and reviewed including efficient sampling, suitable analytical and bio-information distillation techniques. From the preliminary identification of biological VOC components to the interpretation of biological VOC characteristics is a great improvement in this field, which would provide more abundant bio-information during biological metabolism. Owing to complicated biological VOC compositions, any single sampling or bio-information distillation method could not obtain complete biological VOCs and interpret the biological VOC characteristics, and would result in the loss of effective bio-information. The combination of some suitable sampling and bio-information distillation techniques for the study of biological VOCs and the related bio-information will be a novel trend in the future.