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Updated: Jun 4, 2026

Capturing Actively Produced Microbial Volatile Organic Compounds from Human-Associated Samples with Vacuum-Assisted Sorbent Extraction
Published on: June 1, 2022
Biological activity of volatiles from marine and terrestrial bacteria
Stefan Schulz1, Jeroen S Dickschat, Brigitte Kunze
1Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Braunschweig-Institute of Technology, Hagenring 30, Braunschweig, Germany. Stefan.Schulz@tu-bs.de
Abstract:
The antiproliferative activity of 52 volatile compounds released from bacteria was investigated in agar diffusion assays against medically important microorganisms and mouse fibroblasts. Furthermore, the activity of these compounds to interfere with the quorum-sensing-systems was tested with two different reporter strains. While some of the compounds specific to certain bacteria showed some activity in the antiproliferative assay, the compounds common to many bacteria were mostly inactive. In contrast, some of these compounds were active in the quorum-sensing-tests. γ-Lactones showed a broad reactivity, while pyrazines seem to have only low intrinsic activity. A general discussion on the ecological importance of these findings is given.
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