Capturing volatile natural products by mass spectrometry

This review gives a modern methodic overview of how volatile natural products from various sources such as plants, animals, bacteria and fungi can be trapped and how compound identification can be performed even in cases of very low yields or within highly complex compound mixtures. A detailed discussion is presented on how a structural proposal for an unknown analyte can be derived from GC-MS data. Furthermore, the application of trace analytical techniques in biosynthetic studies with isotopically labelled compounds is presented, including a discussion of the pros and cons of different kinds of stable isotope labellings in GC-MS analyses.