Advances in Mammalian Metallomics: New Insights into Metal Dynamics and Biological Significance

TL;DR

This review explores the roles of metal elements in mammals, their biological significance, and potential clinical applications.

Contribution

The paper provides new insights into mammalian metallomics by focusing on physiological roles, detection technologies, and clinical translation.

Findings

Metal elements have complex absorption and transport mechanisms in mammals.

Metallomics is linked to diseases and has diagnostic and therapeutic potential.

Multi-omics integration is highlighted as a future direction in metallomics research.

Abstract

Mammalian metallomics, an advanced interdisciplinary field, explores the dynamic roles of metal elements within biological systems and their significance to life processes. While prior reviews have broadly covered metallomics across different systems, this review narrows the focus to mammals, offering new insights into the physiological roles of metal elements, their complex absorption and transport mechanisms, and their intricate associations with diseases. We summarize the characteristics and applications of common metal detection technologies and elaborate on the dynamic landscape of the mammalian metallomics across different tissues and life stages. Furthermore, we elaborate on the physiological functions of the metals from three perspectives, metal-binding proteins, metal ions, and gut microorganisms, and highlight the potential of metallomics in clinical translation, including its diagnostic and therapeutic implications, alongside future directions centered on multi-omics integration. Overall, this review introduces several common metallomics technologies and synthesizes the findings of mammalian metallomics research from multiple perspectives, offering new insights for future related studies.

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