Within systems biology, the field of metabolomics is considered relatively new1. Despite this, the first reports of metabolic studies can be traced back 1000’s of years. Remarkably, metabolic profiling occurred over 3,000 years ago in ancient China. Doctors used ants to evaluate the urine of patients to detect whether it contained high levels of glucose, using this as an indicator for diabetes2. Other mentions of ‘screening’ urine for high levels of glucose around the same ti