Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 19, 2026

Quantitating Iron Transport Across the Mouse Placenta In Vivo Using Nonradioactive Iron Isotopes
Published on: May 10, 2022
A systems biology approach to iron metabolism
Julia Chifman1, Reinhard Laubenbacher, Suzy V Torti
1Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
Abstract:
Iron is critical to the survival of almost all living organisms. However, inappropriately low or high levels of iron are detrimental and contribute to a wide range of diseases. Recent advances in the study of iron metabolism have revealed multiple intricate pathways that are essential to the maintenance of iron homeostasis. Further, iron regulation involves processes at several scales, ranging from the subcellular to the organismal. This complexity makes a systems biology approach crucial, with its enabling technology of computational models based on a mathematical description of regulatory systems. Systems biology may represent a new strategy for understanding imbalances in iron metabolism and their underlying causes.
Related Concept Videos
Microbes and Other Elemental Cycles
Microbial Nutrition
The Early Endosome: Endocytosis of Transferrin
Sulfur Assimilation
The Periodic Table and Organismal Elements
Lifecycle of Erythrocytes
The resident phagocytic macrophages deal with these damaged cells by engulfing them and separating their globin and heme groups....

