What this entity is
Canonical name: Chromium. 1
Known alias: Cr. 1
Stable external identifier: Not specified in the source report. 1
Key facts
Chromium was one of the metals evaluated in a comparison of metal-important genes with fitness defects across metal and non-metal experiments. 1
Of the chromium-associated metal-important gene records analyzed, 132 of 268 (49.3%) were classified as metal-specific, meaning that they showed significant fitness defects under metal stress but a sick rate below 5% across 5,945 non-metal experiments. 1
This chromium result contributes to the broader distinction between metal-specific determinants and general stress genes in metal-cross-resistance. 1
A separate soil metagenomic analysis found chromium among nine metals associated with 2,355 significant COG–metal associations at FDR < 0.05 across 51,748 samples; chromium and lead produced the strongest signals, with transporters and biosynthesis genes dominating the top hits. These observational results support chromium’s relevance to environmental functional-gene distributions but refine the fitness-based specificity claims: co-varying chromium, copper, lead, and zinc leave it unresolved whether individual associations are chromium-specific or reflect multi-metal contamination. 2
A separate genus-level PGLS analysis found that the association between metal-type diversity and inferred niche breadth remained positive after chromium was excluded (β = +0.0088, p = 0.173). This refines the cross-metal resistance interpretation: the overall signal was directionally distributed across metals, but exclusion of any one metal reduced significance and also compressed the maximum diversity score from 7 to 6, reducing predictor variance and power. 3
Chromium was also among the recommended stresses for follow-up microcosm experiments testing candidate broad-niche, metal-diverse OTUs. 3
The cross-condition classification of chromium-associated genes is part of the analysis summarized in Metal-Specific vs General Stress Genes and relates to condition-specific-fitness. 1
The ecological chromium analysis is summarized in Metal Resistance Ecology — Phylogenetic Conservation vs. Environmental Selection and connects to environmental-resistome and environment-embedding-geography. 3
The soil functional-genomics analysis is summarized in Soil Metal Concentrations Drive Functional Gene Shifts. Its planned partial-correlation analysis and effect-size audit are needed before the chromium-associated COG signals can be interpreted as metal-specific or biologically substantial. 2
Related pages
- Metal-Specific vs General Stress Genes — source-project summary.
- Metal Resistance Ecology — Phylogenetic Conservation vs. Environmental Selection — cross-metal resistance and ecological niche-breadth analysis.
- Soil Metal Concentrations Drive Functional Gene Shifts — soil metal–functional-gene associations and validation caveats.
- metal-cross-resistance — metal-specific versus broadly stress-responsive fitness determinants.
- condition-specific-fitness — classification of fitness defects by experimental condition.
- environmental-resistome — environmental distributions of resistance repertoires.
- environment-embedding-geography — links between resistance traits and environmental distributions.
- metal-fitness-atlas — related metal-fitness data resource.