When vitamins decide life or death

Cell fate decisions have traditionally been interpreted through the lens of genetic programs and signaling cascades. However, increasing evidence places metabolism at the center of life–death determination [ 1 , 2 ]. Among metabolic regulators, vitamins (long regarded as passive nutritional cofactors) are increasingly recognized as active determinants of cellular physiology that couple metabolic state to cell fate. Rather than viewing vitamins solely as metabolic cofactors, this framework positions them as dynamic regulators of the cellular death threshold across systemic, pathway, and molecular levels.