Metals in health: From cell to soil, a multiscale approach

摘要

This special issue of Biochimie, entitled "Metals in health: from cell to soil, a multiscale approach", presents twenty five original papers covering the wide field of metal interactions with humans and its beneficial or toxic effects on health. A transversal approach from the molecular scale to the ecosystem has been chosen. During this journey we address the development of new metal-based drugs, evidence of original mechanisms of action, studies of genomics and metabolic pathways, discovery of biomarkers and genotype-phenotype correlations, and end with more global approaches considering humans in their environment. For some of these steps, new characterisation tools are presented. This program is ambitious and solely some examples are given, oriented particularly towards pharmaceutical applications, or related to metal metabolism and to environmental sciences. This presentation gives us the opportunity to describe methods that exemplify the current state-of-the art.