Mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and their developments in China

As an important component of systems biology, metabonomics (or metabolomics) is a science of studying metabolites and the corresponding changes in living systems. Mass spectrometry is one of the primary analytical tools of metabolomic studies and has been widely applied in many research areas. This paper overviews the recent developments in technologies and applications of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics, highlights major progress and achievement that have been recently gained in China in this field, and discusses the existing problems of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and the future perspectives.