Iron, as a topic, encompasses its roles and behavior across diverse scientific domains, including its coordination chemistry, redox properties, and biological functions. Central to many metalloproteins, iron cycles between Fe²⁺ and Fe³⁺ states, enabling electron transfer, oxygen transport, and catalysis in systems such as hemoglobin, cytochromes, and iron–sulfur clusters. In materials science, iron’s allotropic transformations, magnetic ordering, and alloy formation underlie the properties of steels and other ferrous materials. In geoscience, iron participates in redox-sensitive mineral formation and biogeochemical cycling, influencing atmospheric composition, nutrient availability, and environmental redox gradients across terrestrial and marine systems.
Iron is essential. Our cells need it to produce energy, carry oxygen throughout the body and power countless chemical reactions that sustain life. But this metal has a dark side. When too much of it is left free inside cells, ...
Cell & Microbiology
18 hours ago
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While Earth's core consists mostly of iron, its density implies that lighter elements are also mixed in. Because hydrogen is abundant in the universe and can mix with iron under certain conditions, scientists suspect it makes ...
It was a journey to the center of the Earth, if only for the briefest of moments. But rather than tunneling thousands of miles from Earth's surface, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and several ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 7, 2026
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A new fluorescent reporter capable of visualizing biologically active iron and oxygen inside living cells at single-cell resolution has been developed, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. Using this new tool, they ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 16, 2026
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How much of the essential trace element iron remains available for marine life in the ocean depends critically on the diversity of organic molecules in seawater, according to new research published in Nature Communications ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 28, 2026
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Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have identified simple rules that explain how complex protein structures assemble correctly and remain functional over time, despite having many theoretically possible configurations. ...
Evolution
Apr 14, 2026
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Scientists have found a new type of iron-storing protein in a mixture of microbes containing methane-degraders. This discovery underscores the importance of characterizing proteins from microbes that cannot be isolated, thereby ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 23, 2026
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After more than a decade of research, scientists have discovered the natural mechanism behind a novel form of cell death called ferroptosis. The work, described in the current issue of Cell, points toward an entirely new ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 3, 2026
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Plants fix 258 billion tons of CO2 in their chloroplasts through photosynthesis every year. For these cell organelles to work properly, they require certain minerals—particularly ions of the metals iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 3, 2026
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Researchers at the University of Hamburg, the University of Toulouse, and the DESY and ESRF research institutes have observed for the first time in real time how iron-sulfur nanostructures form in solutions. Using time-resolved ...
Nanomaterials
Jan 28, 2026
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