To enable robust investigation of microbiota–host metabolic interactions, a targeted gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) method was developed and validated by a research group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany) for the simultaneous quantification of 120 chemically diverse gut microbiota–derived metabolites across multiple biological matrices. LCGC International recently spoke to Nikita Denisov and Michael Zimmermann, two of the authors of a paper resulting from this work.