Word.ws English Dictionary

copy number

copy number noun: the number of copies of a gene or plasmid within a cell's genome.

Noun

copy number (plural copy numbers)

  1. The number of copies of a gene or plasmid within a cell's genome.
    • "Reconstruction" or "titration" experiments consisting of amounts of the linear cloned cDNA equivalent to various gene copy numbers in the genomic DNA are run on the same gel.1985, John H. Dodds, Plant Genetic Engineering, →ISBN, page 170
  2. (library science) The identification number assigned to a specific copy of a work.
    • In other words, there was no way to correlate a book's barcode number, by which it was filed in the computer, to its copy number on the shelf list.1987, Terry D. Webb, The In-House Option: Professional Issues of Library Automation, →ISBN, pages 65–66

Forms of copy number

pluralcopy numbers

Questions about copy number

What does copy number mean?
Copy number means the number of copies of a gene or plasmid within a cell's genome.
What part of speech is copy number?
Copy number is a noun.
What is the plural of copy number?
The plural of copy number is copy numbers.

Words near copy number in the dictionary

  1. copy elision
  2. copy girl
  3. copy girls
  4. copy machine
  5. copy machines
  6. copy number
  7. copy number polymorphism
  8. copy number polymorphisms
  9. copy number variation
  10. copy number variations
  11. copy numbers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: copy number (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “copy number.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/copy_number. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.