Practical Considerations in Method Development for Gas Chromatography-Based Metabolomic Profiling

This chapter discusses the fundamentals of gas chromatography (GC) to improve method development for metabolic profiling of complex biological samples. The selection of column geometry and phase ratio impacts analyte mass transfer, which must be carefully optimized for fast analysis. Stationary phase selection is critical to obtain baseline resolution of critical pairs, but such selection must consider important aspects of metabolomic protocols, such as derivatization and dependence of analyte identification on existing databases. Sample preparation methods are also addressed depending on the sample matrix, including liquid-liquid extraction and solid-phase microextraction.