What it is
Selenium is the canonical compound name used for the metal analyzed in the atlas. 1
- Known aliases: none specified in the source.
- Stable external identifier: none provided in the source.
Evidence from the metal fitness atlas
Selenium had 134 metal-important genes, a core fraction of 0.933, a core-fraction delta of +0.131, an odds ratio of 3.59, and p=2.9e-05. 1
This core enrichment contributes to the atlas-wide finding that metal-important genes are predominantly core-genome genes rather than accessory genes, supporting the metal-cross-resistance model of broadly required metal-stress functions alongside specialized resistance mechanisms. 1
Selenium was classified among the essential metals, for which tolerance genes had a mean core-fraction delta of +0.148, nearly double the toxic-metal delta of +0.081; this difference was significant by one-sided Mann-Whitney U testing (U=39, p=0.015). 1
Selenium had limited organism coverage: the report identifies selenium among the metals tested in only one or two organisms, so its cross-species pattern may largely reflect the biology of a small number of organisms. 1
The selenium result is part of the 559-experiment, 16-metal atlas containing 383,349 gene × metal fitness records across 31 organisms. 1
Specificity across conditions
A separate classification of metal-important records found that 64 of 138 selenium-associated records (46.4%) were metal-specific: they showed significant metal fitness defects but a <5% sick rate across non-metal experiments. 2 This refines the atlas-wide core-enrichment result by separating broadly required core functions from a substantial, though not majority, fraction of selenium-associated determinants that appear condition-specific; the fraction is threshold-dependent. 2
Related pages
- Pan-Bacterial Metal Fitness Atlas — source report for the selenium fitness and conservation statistics.
- Metal-Specific vs General Stress Genes — source report for metal-specific versus general-stress classification.
- metal-cross-resistance — cross-metal synthesis distinguishing core metal-stress functions from specialized resistance.
- condition-specific-fitness — contrasts broad metal fitness defects with condition-specific metal phenotypes.
- pangenome-integration — connects metal fitness phenotypes with core and accessory genome structure.