Ferroptosis: A flexible constellation of related biochemical mechanisms

It is common to think about and depict biological processes as being governed by fixed pathways with specific components interconnected by concrete positive and negative interactions. However, these models may fail to effectively capture the regulation of cell biological processes that are driven by chemical mechanisms that do not rely absolutely on specific metabolites or proteins. Here, we discuss how ferroptosis, a non-apoptotic cell death mechanism with emerging links to disease, may be best understood as a highly flexible mechanism that can be executed and regulated by many functionally related metabolites and proteins. The inherent plasticity of ferroptosis has implications for how to define and study this mechanism in healthy and diseased cells and organisms.