Word.ws English Dictionary

piwi

/ˈpiwi/

piwi noun: a class of genes originally identified as encoding regulatory proteins responsible for maintaining incomplete differentiation in stem cells and maintaining the stability of cell division rates in germline cells.

Noun

piwi (plural piwis)

  1. (attributive) A class of genes originally identified as encoding regulatory proteins responsible for maintaining incomplete differentiation in stem cells and maintaining the stability of cell division rates in germline cells.
    • However, piwi and tudor-domain containing genes are absent from flukes and tapeworms and no true vasa orthologue has been identified in schistosomes.2015 August 25, David Roquis et al., “The Epigenome of Schistosoma mansoni Provides Insight about How Cercariae Poise Transcription until Infection”, in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, volume 9...
  2. a small Australian magpie lark, also known as a Murray magpie.

Forms of piwi

pluralpiwis

Origin of piwi

Short for P-element induced wimpy testis in Drosophila.

Questions about piwi

What does piwi mean?
Piwi means a class of genes originally identified as encoding regulatory proteins responsible for maintaining incomplete differentiation in stem cells and maintaining the stability of cell division rates in germline cells.
What part of speech is piwi?
Piwi is a noun.
How do you pronounce piwi?
Piwi is pronounced /ˈpiwi/.
What is the plural of piwi?
The plural of piwi is piwis.

Words near piwi in the dictionary

  1. pivoxazepam
  2. pivoxil
  3. PIVs
  4. piwakawaka
  5. piwari
  6. piwi
  7. piwis
  8. pix
  9. pix0r
  10. pix0rs
  11. pixane

Source and license

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