Word.ws English Dictionary

auxotrophy

auxotrophy noun: the inability of a microorganism to synthesize an organic compound required for its growth, often as a result of mutation.

Noun

auxotrophy (usually uncountable, plural auxotrophies)

  1. (usually) The inability of a microorganism to synthesize an organic compound required for its growth, often as a result of mutation.
    • There are reasons for believing that the mutation rates to auxotrophy are in general higher than the rates to prototrophy.1951 March, K. C. Atwood, “Periodic Selection in Escherichia Coli”, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, volume 37, number 3, page 146

Forms of auxotrophy

pluralauxotrophies

Origin of auxotrophy

From auxo- + -trophy.

Questions about auxotrophy

What does auxotrophy mean?
Auxotrophy means the inability of a microorganism to synthesize an organic compound required for its growth, often as a result of mutation.
What part of speech is auxotrophy?
Auxotrophy is a noun.
What is the plural of auxotrophy?
The plural of auxotrophy is auxotrophies.

Words near auxotrophy in the dictionary

  1. auxotrophically
  2. auxotrophies
  3. auxotrophism
  4. auxotrophisms
  5. auxotrophs
  6. auxotrophy
  7. auxotropic
  8. auxotropy
  9. auxotype
  10. auxotyped
  11. auxotypes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: auxotrophy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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