--- name: cell-metabolism description: Use when targeting Cell Metabolism or deciding whether a metabolism/physiology manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # Cell Metabolism (cell-metabolism) ## Journal positioning Cell Metabolism is Cell Press's flagship metabolism and physiology journal, publishing mechanistic studies of how organisms sense, process, and adapt to nutrients, energy, and metabolic stress — with emphasis on in vivo physiology and disease relevance. The core territory is metabolic disease (obesity, type 2 diabetes, NAFLD/NASH, cardiovascular-metabolic risk), mitochondrial biology, aging and longevity, and the metabolic underpinning of organ crosstalk. The readership spans metabolic biologists, physiologists, endocrinologists, and disease-oriented researchers; papers must deliver a mechanistic advance with in vivo grounding, not just a cell-culture phenotype. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the Cell Press site or submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names Cell Metabolism as the target venue. - A metabolism/physiology study is deciding between Cell Metabolism and Nature Metabolism, Cell, or a society metabolism journal. - An in vivo metabolic study needs to assess whether its mechanistic depth and disease relevance meet the bar. - The author needs this venue's desk-reject patterns and re-routing options. ## Scope & topic fit - Energy homeostasis mechanisms: nutrient sensing (mTOR, AMPK, insulin signaling), fuel switching, and systemic energy balance studied in vivo. - Adipose biology, hepatic metabolism, skeletal-muscle fuel utilization — when the mechanistic insight is physiologically grounded. - Mitochondrial function and dysfunction in physiology and disease: electron transport, dynamics, mitophagy, inter-organellar communication. - Metabolic aging and longevity mechanisms: calorie restriction mimetics, mTOR/IGF-1/NAD pathways, senescence-metabolism interactions. - Gut-microbiome interactions with host metabolism when the host-side mechanism is the primary advance. - Immuno-metabolism and cancer metabolism are in scope when the metabolic mechanism — not the immune or cancer phenotype — is the central contribution. ## Method & evidence bar - In vivo physiology is the default expectation: genetic mouse models (whole-body or tissue-specific knockouts, knock-ins), dietary or pharmacological perturbation with careful phenotyping (indirect calorimetry, glucose and insulin tolerance, clamp studies, metabolic cage data). - Mechanism must go beyond phenotype: genetic epistasis, metabolite tracing (stable isotope / 13C flux), or biochemical pathway validation is expected. - Metabolite profiling or metabolomics should be hypothesis-driven and mechanistically interpreted; untargeted discovery alone is insufficient. - Translation to human tissue (biopsies, organoids, or cohort correlations) is valued but not always mandatory; absence must be justified. - STAR Methods required; reagent/data deposition (metabolomics to MetaboLights or equivalent, sequencing to GEO, animal model details) per Cell Press policy. - Rigor reporting: blinding of outcome assessment in animal studies, group sizes with power justification, sex as a biological variable addressed. ## Structure & house style - STAR Methods is mandatory; key resources table covers antibodies, mouse strains, software, metabolites/reagents. - Structured abstract with an "in brief" or "highlights" box; the title is declarative and states the physiological mechanism or disease connection. - Figures should build a coherent physiological narrative: establish the in vivo phenotype, determine the tissue/cell of action, identify the molecular mechanism, confirm with epistasis or rescue. - Graphical abstract standard for Cell Press; source data for all quantitative figures required. - Translational framing in the introduction and discussion must be specific: name the disease context, not just "metabolic syndrome." - Data and code availability statement required; statistical methods including treatment of sex and replication must be explicit. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search "Cell Metabolism author information" on the Cell Press site and follow the current version. - Re-check article types (Article, Short Article, Resource), length and figure limits, and supplemental policy. - Confirm STAR Methods and key resources table requirements for the current submission cycle. - Re-check animal ethics approval, sex-as-biological-variable reporting, and ARRIVE guidelines compliance. - Verify competing-interests, funding, and AI-use disclosure requirements. - Re-check data/metabolomics/sequencing deposition requirements and open-access/license options. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence stating the physiological mechanism discovered and its relevance to a metabolic disease or aging. - [ ] The advance is framed as a mechanistic insight, not as "gene X affects body weight." - [ ] In vivo data are central; if cell culture predominates, the physiological relevance is rigorously established. - [ ] Sex as a biological variable is explicitly addressed in the experimental design and statistics. - [ ] STAR Methods, key resources table, and data/code deposition are prepared. - [ ] Metabolite tracing, genetic epistasis, or equivalent mechanistic evidence supports causal conclusions. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Entirely cell-based study with no in vivo component and no convincing justification for why in vivo work is impossible. - Phenotypic description in a knockout mouse without a mechanistic explanation of how the target drives the metabolic phenotype. - Metabolomics or proteomics survey with no mechanistic follow-through — a correlation list, not an advance. - Sex as a biological variable ignored in animal studies without justification. - Clinical or epidemiological study without a mechanistic molecular story — better suited to Diabetes Care, Cell Reports Medicine, or a clinical endocrinology journal. ## Re-routing decision - Paradigm-shifting metabolic advance with extremely broad significance → `cell` (if the conceptual reach spans beyond metabolism) or `nature` / `science`. - Strong metabolic mechanism but somewhat narrower scope → `nature-metabolism` (Springer Nature; same tier, slightly broader tolerance for translational-only studies). - Cancer-metabolic mechanism with cancer biology as the primary frame → `cancer-cell` or `molecular-cell`. - Solid mechanistic work below the Cell Metabolism significance bar → `elife`, `plos-biology`, or a society journal such as Diabetes or the Journal of Lipid Research. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Cell Metabolism [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```