As far as I know, selenocysteine is the only reason you need selenium in your diet (which you almost certainly get enough of; the requirement is vanishingly small, <100 micrograms/day). It is a member of the same group as oxygen. As you go down a group, things change in subtle ways. Sulfur is a less-electronegative, bigger, more polarizable, more nucleophilic, stinkier oxygen. Similarly, selenium is all these things, but more so!

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…