Library / English Dictionary

PHAGE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A virus that is parasitic (reproduces itself) in bacteria

Example:

phage uses the bacterium's machinery and energy to produce more phage until the bacterium is destroyed and phage is released to invade surrounding bacteria

Synonyms:

bacteriophage; phage

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("phage" is a kind of...):

virus ((virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "phage"):

coliphage (a bacteriophage that infects the bacterium Escherichia coli)

typhoid bacteriophage (a bacteriophage specific for the bacterium Salmonella typhi)

Credits

 Context examples: 

CRE Recombinase catalyses site-specific recombination between two 34 base pair loxp sites and maintains the phage genome as a monomeric unit-copy plasmid in the lysogenic state.

(CRE Recombinase, NCI Thesaurus)