Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and its application in metabonomics

Metabonomics involves the unbiased quantitative and qualitative analysis of the complete set of metabolites present in cells, body fluids and tissues (the metabolome) based on modern analytic technique with high throughput, high sensitivity, and high resolution. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is used to gain qualitative results of detected metabolites for biological samples as it provides superior distinguishability, detection sensitivity and integrated standard mass spectrometry library. In this article, the historic developments of GC-MS and its application in metabonomics in the past several years were reviewed. Firstly, the classification and the derivative methods of GC-MS were introduced. Subsequently, sample pretreatment process, qualitative and quantitative analysis and data analysis during detecting metabolites by GC-MS were introduced, then its application in microorganism, plant and disease diagnosis was systematically summarized. Finally, the problems in metabonomics study based on GC-MS and the research prospect in the future were discussed.