Identity
Cadmium is a metal evaluated in experiments assessing metal-specific versus general-stress fitness determinants. 1
- Canonical name: Cadmium. 1
- Known aliases: None reported in the source. 1
- Stable external identifier: Not reported in the source. 1
Evidence from metal_specificity
Among 93 cadmium-important gene records, 52 were classified as metal-specific, corresponding to 55.9%. 1
Metal-specific genes showed significant fitness defects under metal stress but a sick rate below 5% across the non-metal experiments used for classification. 1
The cadmium result contributes to the report’s distinction between metal-specific fitness determinants and broadly pleiotropic stress genes. 1
Evidence from microbeatlas_metal_ecology
A cross-genus phylogenetic generalized least-squares (PGLS), a regression method accounting for phylogenetic relationships, analysis found that the association between metal-type diversity and inferred niche breadth remained positive when cadmium was excluded, but was not significant (β = +0.0084, p = 0.186). This refines the cadmium-specific result: cadmium contributes to a distributed cross-metal signal, but the analysis does not establish that cadmium alone drives ecological breadth. 2
Cadmium was also among the recommended stresses for proposed microcosm validation experiments targeting organisms with both broad inferred niches and diverse metal-resistance repertoires. 2
Evidence from soil_metal_functional_genomics
A soil metagenomic analysis included cadmium among nine metals measured across 51,748 samples and identified 2,355 significant COG–metal associations at FDR < 0.05; COG means Cluster of Orthologous Groups functional category and FDR means false discovery rate. 3 This supports cadmium’s relevance to environmental functional-gene distributions but does not provide a cadmium-specific association count or establish that cadmium caused the observed shifts. 3
The environmental result refines the fitness-based evidence: chromium and lead produced the strongest signals overall, while co-varying metals—including cadmium in the nine-metal design—leave it unresolved whether individual associations are cadmium-specific or reflect multi-metal contamination. 3
Related pages
- metal-cross-resistance — frames cadmium-specific determinants alongside genes responding to metals and other stresses; the MicrobeAtlas analysis refines this comparison by testing the contribution of cadmium to cross-metal ecological breadth, while the soil analysis highlights unresolved co-contamination. 1,2,3
- condition-specific-fitness — covers the cross-condition classification used to identify cadmium-specific genes. 1
- environmental-resistome — connects metal-resistance determinants with environmental resistance analyses; the soil study supports this connection while limiting causal interpretation. 1,3
- Metal-Specific vs General Stress Genes — source-project summary. 1
- Metal Resistance Ecology — Phylogenetic Conservation vs. Environmental Selection — source-project summary of phylogenetic and environmental metal-resistance ecology. 2
- Soil Metal Concentrations Drive Functional Gene Shifts — source-project summary of soil metal–functional-gene associations and validation caveats. 3