What this entity is
Canonical name: Mercury. 1
Known aliases: None reported in the source. 1
Stable external identifier: None reported in the source. 1
Mercury is one of the metals evaluated in the comparison of metal-specific and general-stress genes. 1 It was also one of nine metals measured in a soil functional-genomics analysis spanning 51,748 samples and 2,355 significant COG–metal associations at FDR < 0.05. Here, COG means a Cluster of Orthologous Groups functional category and FDR means false discovery rate. 2
Key facts from metal_specificity
Among the mercury-important gene records analyzed, 35 of 107 (32.7%) 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
Mercury had the lowest metal-specific fraction among the 15 metals reported in the analysis, below iron at 21.9%? No—the mercury fraction was 32.7%, while iron’s fraction was 21.9%. 1
The mercury result contributes to the broader finding that metal-specificity varied substantially by metal, with reported fractions ranging from 21.9% for iron to 60.6% for manganese. 1
The soil analysis refines this fitness-based view: mercury was included in a broad observational screen of metal-associated functional shifts, but chromium and lead produced the strongest signals, so the report does not establish mercury as a leading driver of soil COG variation. 2
Relation to metal-resistance ecology
The MicrobeAtlas analysis refines the fitness-based picture by testing mercury as one component of genus-level metal-type diversity rather than as an isolated metal-specific fitness category. In leave-one-metal-out sensitivity analysis, excluding mercury retained a positive association between remaining metal-type diversity and inferred niche breadth (β = +0.0082, p = 0.233), although it was not significant after the exclusion. 3 The report interprets the consistently positive, but power-sensitive, exclusions across all 7 metals as consistent with a distributed signal rather than dependence on mercury alone. 3
The soil study supports examining mercury within multi-metal rather than isolated-metal models, because chromium, copper, lead, and zinc co-vary in many industrial soils; however, it leaves unresolved whether individual COG associations are mercury-specific or reflect generic multi-metal contamination. Partial-correlation analyses and spatial validation are planned. 2
This ecological result supports considering mercury within broader cross-metal resistance repertoires, but it does not establish that mercury-specific resistance causes wider ecological range; the association is correlational and may also reflect genome size, metabolic versatility, or gene acquisition opportunities. 3
Related pages
- metal-cross-resistance — compares metal-specific determinants with genes responding to metals and other stresses. 1
- condition-specific-fitness — provides the cross-condition fitness classification used to define metal-specific genes. 1
- environmental-resistome — places metal-resistance determinants in the broader environmental resistance landscape. 1
- metal-fitness-atlas — related metal-fitness resource referenced by the analysis. 1
- 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. 3
- Soil Metal Concentrations Drive Functional Gene Shifts — source-project summary of soil metal–functional-gene associations and validation limits. 2