Metabolism in Lung Development and Injury/Repair Throughout Human Lifetime

Dear Colleagues,

Lung structure and function emerge from tightly regulated metabolic programs that shift from fetal development to childhood, adulthood, and aging. Metabolites, such as lipids, amino acids, nucleotides, and redox intermediates, serve not only as energy substrates but also as signaling molecules, with the ability to distinguish regeneration from maladaptive remodeling. These molecules and programs control crucial processes, including, but not limited to, the following:

- Developmental metabolic programs across multiple cell types (epithelial, endothelial, mesenchymal, and immune), including lipid/phospholipid metabolism for surfactant, redox system maturation, and function.

- Metabolic control of cell fate and function (for example, epithelial cell differentiations, fibroblast activation/resolution during lung growth and differentiation, macrophage polarization, and vascular remodeling) in normal development and pregnancy complications (fetal growth restriction, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, preterm birth, etc.).

- Different repair trajectories following injury via viral/bacterial infections, multiple acute or chronic exposures, pollutants, allergens, or fibrosis development.

Disruption of any of these routes by genetics, infection, environmental exposures, or mechanical stress can cause the lung to enter maladaptive states, impair regeneration, and predispose to chronic disease.

This Special Issue invites authors to submit mechanistic and translational studies that define how metabolic pathways and metabolite signaling guide lung development and influence injury responses and repair across the human lifetime.

We are looking for articles that address the following:

• Combine metabolomics with other ’omics(transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics, lipidomics, etc.) and/or spatial/single-cell technologies (e.g., imaging mass spectrometry, spatial metabolomics, and scRNA-seq with metabolite inference) to resolve cell- and region-specific metabolism.
• Investigate metabolite changes during developmental windows and aging, from fetal/neonatal programs to adolescence and adult homeostasis.
• Identify biomarkers and therapeutic outcomes predictive or responsive to intervention.
• Current computational methods for metabolite-pathway inference, flux modeling, and multi-omics data integration relevant to lung biology.

Dr. Evgenia Dobrinskikh
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Metabolites is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.