The scope of Metallomics

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Abstract

The field of metallomics is still emerging and has grown rapidly over the last few years which, in part, led the Royal Society of Chemistry to launch the associated journal of the field, Metallomics, in 2009. It envisioned to be the leading journal dedicated to metallomics research – investigations of metals within a system.

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Metallomics has grown steadily and now publishes over 200 articles a year in the form of original research, Perspectives and other types of Reviews, which provide biologically significant findings on the role of metals, metalloids and occasionally other trace elements. The Editorial Board has recently assessed the scope of the journal, as well as the wide community of researchers conducting these investigations of metals in biological systems. As a result, we here provide a focus on the types of articles we wish to consider. Metallomics' mission is to publish cutting-edge investigations that consider the metallome (metal, metalloid or trace element) of an entire system, and investigations that may report on the effect of individual metal ions on the organism's other ‘omes’, such as the genome, proteome or metabolome. We recognise that investigations can cover the metallome from within a broad range of disciplines including analytical, bioinorganic, environmental or medicinal chemistry.

We have provided a more detailed description of which manuscripts are of interest to the journal in our author guidelines:

“Studies relevant to the scope of Metallomics should be aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms of metal-dependent life processes or probing the interactions between the metallome and other ‘omes’. Examples from within several disciplines are described below – both studies that are relevant to the journal, and also examples where the focus of study will not be of interest to Metallomics:

Analytical: analytical approaches to characterise metallomes or bioimaging and localisation of metallomes in biological systems are of interest to Metallomics. Studies purely focusing on speciation, without insight into the metal metabolism in the biological system, will not be published in Metallomics.

Bioinorganic: studies of metal-containing biomolecules that provide insight into the molecular mechanisms of metal use in biology are relevant. Studies that focus only on the synthesis and properties of these biologically interesting coordination complexes, will not be published in Metallomics.

Environmental: studies that report on the metallome of an organism or a group of organisms as a function of environmental conditions, or as related to specific environmental niches (for example, anaerobic environments, acidic mine drains, oil-impacted marine environments, restricted diets and metal-pollution affected uptake), are encouraged. Studies that focus only on metals and their speciation in the environment without discussing the biological system, will not be published in Metallomics.

Medicinal: studies in biological systems relevant to human health including a system-wide, metal-based response to a disease process, and including metal-based drugs (as long as they are relevant to human health), will be considered. Studies that simply focus on characterising a range of biological responses to a metal-based drug in cell lines, under conditions that are of limited relevance to human health, will not be published in Metallomics.”

This description is neither exhaustive nor exclusive; for example, the areas of biogeochemistry, bioinformatics, and nutrition and toxicology are also relevant to the scope of the journal. We bear in mind the other venues that our community has to publish work outside of the scope of Metallomics. For example, our excellent sister journals, Analytical Methods, Dalton Transactions and Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry are superb venues for complementary work to that described in the Metallomics author guidelines.

We hope this Editorial serves best all of the many scientists conducting metallomics research. We look forward to your submissions from all areas of the biosciences.

The Editorial Board of Metallomics

Wolfgang Maret – Chair, Mike Adams, Rachel Austin, Chunying Chen, David Giedroc, María Montes Bayón, Yasumitsu Ogra, Chris Orvig, Deborah Zamble, Sam Keltie – Managing Editor, Philippa Ross – Executive Editor.

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