Elemental Homeostasis in immunity: From metallostasis to immunometabolic regulation

Essential elements, including trace metals and minerals, are fundamental to immune function, acting as enzymatic cofactors, signaling mediators, redox regulators, and metabolic substrates. Immune responses depend not only on the total availability of these elements but also on their cellular distribution, chemical speciation, binding partners, transport dynamics, and dynamic regulation across tissues and cell types. This emerging perspective places elemental homeostasis at the intersection of immunity, metabolism, and molecular regulation, offering a framework to understand how the immune system senses and responds to fluctuations in elemental status during homeostasis, infection, and chronic disease. Disruption of this balance, whether through deficiency, overload, or altered compartmentalization, is increasingly recognized as a driver of immune dysfunction across a wide range of pathological contexts.This Research Topic aims to explore how essential elements contribute to the regulation of immune cell function, immunometabolism, inflammatory signaling, oxidative stress, and host-pathogen interactions. Recent advances in metallomics, elemental imaging, and systems-level analysis have begun to reveal how elemental homeostasis shapes immune cell fate and effector function, yet the molecular mechanisms linking element availability to immune outcomes remain incompletely understood. By bringing together studies on macrophage polarization, lymphocyte activation, innate and adaptive immunity, and cellular redox regulation, this Topic seeks to advance a more integrated understanding of elemental biology as a regulatory layer of the immune system, with the ultimate goal of informing new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies grounded in elemental and metabolic regulation.We welcome the submission of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:- Elemental homeostasis and macrophage polarization;- Lymphocyte activation and innate/adaptive immunity;- Inflammatory signaling, cellular metabolism, and oxidative stress regulation;- Nutritional immunity in the context of infection, cancer, autoimmune disease, and neuroinflammation;- Other immune-related disorders shaped by elemental dysregulation.Studies employing emerging analytical and systems-level approaches, including metallomics, elemental imaging, chemical speciation, single-cell elemental analysis, and integrated multi-omics, are also encouraged, particularly those elucidating the spatial, molecular, and functional dimensions of element biology within immune systems. Together, these contributions are expected to build a cohesive and forward-looking resource for researchers working at the interface of immunology, metabolism, and elemental biology. Topic editors: Jemmyson Romario Jesus, Cícero Alves Lopes Júnior Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85586/elemental-homeostasis-in-immunity-from-metallostasis-to-immunometabolic-regulation