SuperScent--a database of flavors and scents

Abstract

Volatiles are efficient mediators of chemical communication acting universally as attractant, repellent or warning signal in all kingdoms of life. Beside this broad impact volatiles have in nature, scents are also widely used in pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries, so the identification of new scents is of great industrial interest. Despite this importance as well as the vast number and diversity of volatile compounds, there is currently no comprehensive public database providing information on structure and chemical classification of volatiles. Therefore, the database SuperScent was established to supply users with detailed information on the variety of odor components. The version of the database presented here comprises the 2D/3D structures of approximately 2100 volatiles and around 9200 synonyms as well as physicochemical properties, commercial availability and references. The volatiles are classified according to their origin, functionality and odorant groups. The information was extracted from the literature and web resources. SuperScent offers several search options, e.g. name, Pubchem ID number, species, functional groups, or molecular weight. SuperScent is available online at: http://bioinformatics.charite.de/superscent.

Effectiveness of different solid-phase microextraction fibres for differentiation of selected Madeira island fruits based on their volatile metabolite profile—Identification of novel compounds

“…5-Hydroxymethylfurfural and furfural are usually associated to the sweet flavour of fruits and have been identified in several other fruits aroma, including annona [31], apples [32] and banana (our unpublished results), as well as different Prunus species [37]. The volatiles composition of different kiwi species has been evaluated by different methods, but to our knowledge, only the report from Wan et al [34] used SPME to characterize kiwi aroma profile in the same A. deliciosa specie.…”

Strategies for structure elucidation of small molecules using gas chromatography-mass spectrometric data

“…The combination of mass spectrum and RI is a mature strategy for structure elucidation [33]. Like a reference mass spectral database, plenty of RIs have been obtained and several databases of RIs built [16][17][18][19][20][34][35][36][37][38]. Though these databases exist, their application in molecular identification is not yet widespread.…”

“…The commercial libraries {e.g., Robert Adams [16] and Mass Finder Terpenoids [52] libraries} include Kovats RI values for all compounds. Publicly accessible Kovats RI databases [17][18][19][20] were manually collected from the literature. However, RI depends on the experimental conditions (e.g., column polarity, column length, temperature programming and column efficiency), because they influence normal alkanes and analytes to different extents.…”

Volatile Components in the Flower, Pedicellate Ovary and Aqueous Residue of <i>Cymbidium</i> sp. (ORCHIDACEAE)

“…In Cymbidium goeringii, compounds have been isolated with hypotensive activity and diuretic activity (peptidoglycan monomer) [10,11]. The study and evaluation of the volatile compounds emitted by orchids and their possible medical applications is a broad and emerging research field [12,13]. Against this background, in this study, the volatile components in the flower, ovary and aqueous residue of Cymbidium sp.…”