Centralized resource for chemicals from the human volatilome in an interactive open-sourced database

摘要

The breath topics submitted to Journal of Breath Research reflect changes in the breath research field; we are growing beyond traditional targeted analysis of small groups of gas-phase compounds like ketones, aldehydes, alkanes, and similar exogenous and endogenous compounds. We are now including nontargeted (discovery) strategies with increasingly sophisticated instrumentation and finding many hundreds (maybe thousands) of new features in breath, exhaled breath condensate, exhaled breath aerosols, and other breath-related in vitro samples including tissue and cell cultures. Some researchers are looking at breath or tissue samples from animal models (mouse, rat) for developing pre-clinical diagnostics, or for assessing health state of livestock (horses, cows, sheep) and working animals (dogs, dolphins). Overall, we are faced with an overwhelming number of chromatographic peaks, mass spectra, ions and adducts, library searches, retention times, meta-data, etc that make it very difficult to interpret our studies. This complexity is reflected in recent journal submissions that introduce new bioinformatics assessments, and detailed mathematics and statistical analyses.