Metabonomics is a new 'omic' that has emerged in the postgenomic era. Recently, metabonomics technology is increasingly and widely used in the field of traditional Chinese medicine research; however, metabonomics research investigating the function and mechanisms of acupuncture is still at an exploratory stage. The present article describes the unique advantages of metabonomics in systems biology, analyzes the application of metabonomics, and presents a preliminary exploration of the application of metabonomics in modern acupuncture research including sham acupuncture, time acupuncture, mechanistic research investigating the effects of acupuncture on serious illness and the compatibility of prescriptions with acupuncture in clinical research. etabonomics is a new 'omic' that has emerged in the postgenomic era. It has the advantages of high throughput, sensitivity and accuracy. To date, the application of metabonomics technology in research has been preliminary, and there is considerable potential for its application in research investigating traditional Chinese medicine. Both acupuncture and metabonomics technology are superior techniques, but metabonomics research related to the function and mechanism of acupuncture is still in the exploratory stage, and there has been relatively little research in this field. Applying metabonomics to studying acupuncture will help to elucidate the mechanism of acupuncture thoroughly and systematically, and will promote acupuncture theory and clinical development. The present article describes both the definition and research methods of metabonomics, as well as its potential application in acupuncture. DEfInITIOn Of METABOnOMICSNicholson et al (1) first proposed the definition of metabonomics in 1999. 'Metabonomics' refers to the quantitative analysis of all metabolites in a biological system. Fiehn (2), Nielsen and Oliver (3), and other authors have proposed different but related definitions of metabonomics, which include: metabolic profiling analysis (quantitative determination of specific predetermined structure-and property-related metabolites); metabolite target analysis (quantitative determination of products or substrates of a target protein); and metabolite fingerprinting (qualitatively and semiquantitatively analyzing internal and external metabolites of cells).Metabonomics research is based on the analysis of metabolic group indexes and uses high-throughput tests and different data processing techniques and targets to model biological information, which is collected and systematically meta-analyzed. It represents an important branch of systems biology, and is another research field and branch of systems biology after genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics. It is a research method that quantitatively analyzes a variety of time-related responses of metabolic parameters when an organism is affected by exogenous stimuli or genetic modification (4). Metabonomics studies the change of all small molecule metabolites with molecular weight <1000 Da when the organism is subje...