Word.ws English Dictionary

phosphorylate

phosphorylate verb: to cause phosphorylation.

Verb

phosphorylate (third-person singular simple present phosphorylates, present participle phosphorylating, simple past and past participle phosphorylated)

  1. (transitive) To cause phosphorylation.
    • The protein made by the viral src gene was so potent and hyperactive that it phosphorylated anything and everything around it.2010, Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies, Fourth Estate (2011), page 359
  2. (intransitive) To undergo phosphorylation.

Forms of phosphorylate

third-person singular presentphosphorylates
present participlephosphorylating
past participlephosphorylated
pastphosphorylated

Origin of phosphorylate

From phosphoryl + -ate (verb-forming suffix), or back-formation from phosphorylation.

Words formed from phosphorylate

Questions about phosphorylate

What does phosphorylate mean?
Phosphorylate means to cause phosphorylation.
What part of speech is phosphorylate?
Phosphorylate is a verb.
What is the past tense of phosphorylate?
The past tense of phosphorylate is phosphorylated.

Words near phosphorylate in the dictionary

  1. phosphoryl
  2. phosphorylable
  3. phosphorylase
  4. phosphorylases
  5. phosphorylatable
  6. phosphorylate
  7. phosphorylated
  8. phosphorylated adenosine
  9. phosphorylated adenosines
  10. phosphorylates
  11. phosphorylating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phosphorylate (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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Cite this entry: “phosphorylate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phosphorylate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.