Original title: An Overview of Selenium Uptake, Metabolism, and Toxicity in Plants
Selenium is a nutrient for people and animals, but too much can be toxic. Whether plants need selenium themselves is still debated, though small amounts may help them cope with stresses such as drought and cold. Because selenium is chemically similar to sulfur, roots take it up using sulfur transporters and process it through the plant’s sulfur pathway. At high doses, selenium can cause damaging chemical stress and disrupt proteins.
Imagine putting groceries away when two items come in nearly identical bags. It is easy to place one in the spot meant for the other, and too much of either can cause trouble. In this paper, selenium is the look-alike item, sulfur’s root entry points are the shared spot, and the plant’s sulfur-processing steps are where selenium is handled afterward.
Plants supply most of the selenium people eat, but too much selenium can harm plants and animals. Understanding how plants absorb and process it could help guide efforts to reduce excess selenium in some places and increase it in crops where diets lack it.
The abstract does not give specific experimental results, selenium dose levels, or details of how the proposed strategies work. It also says that whether selenium is essential for plants remains controversial, so the overview does not settle that question.
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An Overview of Selenium Uptake, Metabolism, and Toxicity in Plants — Meetu Gupta, Shikha Gupta — Frontiers in Plant Science — doi:10.3389/fpls.2016.02074
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.