Volatile Metabolites Emission by In Vivo Microalgae—An Overlooked Opportunity?

Fragrances and malodors are ubiquitous in the environment, arising from natural and artificial processes, by the generation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Although VOCs constitute only a fraction of the metabolites produced by an organism, the detection of VOCs has a broad range of civilian, industrial, military, medical, and national security applications. The VOC metabolic profile of an organism has been referred to as its ‘volatilome’ (or ‘volatome’) and the study of volatilome/volatome is characterized as ‘volatilomics’, a relatively new category in the ‘omics’ arena. There is considerable literature on VOCs extracted destructively from microalgae for applications such as food, natural products chemistry, and biofuels. VOC emissions from living (in vivo) microalgae too are being increasingly appreciated as potential real-time indicators of the organism’s state of health (SoH) along with their contributions to the environment and ecology. This review summarizes VOC emissions from in vivo microalgae; tools and techniques for the collection, storage, transport, detection, and pattern analysis of VOC emissions; linking certain VOCs to biosynthetic/metabolic pathways; and the role of VOCs in microalgae growth, infochemical activities, predator-prey interactions, and general SoH.