Volatile organic compounds emitted by a human body form a chemical signature capable of providing invaluable information on the physiological status of an individual and, thereby, could serve as signs-of-life for detecting victims after natural or man-made disasters. In this review a database of potential biomarkers of human presence was created on the basis of existing literature reports on volatiles in human breath, skin emanation, blood, and urine. Approximate fluxes of these species from the human body were estimated and used to predict their concentrations in the vicinity of victims. The proposed markers were classified into groups of different potential for victim detection. The major classification discriminants were the capability of detection by portable, real-time analytical instruments and background levels in urban environment. The data summarized in this review are intended to assist studies on the detection of humans via chemical analysis and accelerate investigations in this area of knowledge.
This paper presents, for the first time, four diversity types of protein amino acids. The first type includes two amino acids (G, P), both without standard hydrocarbon side chains; the second one four amino acids, as two pairs [(A, L), (V, I)], all with standard hydrocarbon side chains; the third type comprises the six amino acids, as three pairs [(F, Y), (H, W), (C, M)], two aromatic, two hetero aromatic and two hetero non-aromatic); finally, the fourth type consists of eight amino acids, as four pairs [(S, T), (D, E), (N, Q), (K, R)], all with a functional group which also exists in amino acid functional group (wholly presented: H2N-.CH-COOH; separately: OH, COOH, CONH2, NH2). The insight into existence of four types of diversity was possible only after an insight into the existence of some very new arithmetical regularities, which were so far unknown. Also, as for showing these four types was necessary to reveal the relationships between several key harmonic structures of the genetic code (which we presented in our previous works), this paper is also a review article of the authors researches of the genetic code. By this, the review itself shows that the said harmonic structures are connected through the same (or near the same) chemically determined amino acid pairs, 10 pairs out of the 190 possible.