Word.ws English Dictionary

shibire

shibire noun: a gene found in Drosophila, its homolog of the dynamin gene.

Noun

shibire (uncountable)

  1. A gene found in Drosophila, its homolog of the dynamin gene.
    Synonyms:
    shi

Synonyms of shibire

Origin of shibire

From Japanese しびれ (shibire, “numbness, paralyzed”). Coined by Japanese-Canadian geneticist and zoologist David Suzuki, its discoverer. Originally discovered in its temperature sensitive form, shibire(ts), which caused the afflicted flies to drop from the sky on a temperature change, appearing to be a gene causing paralysis. Suzuki, referencing his Japanese heritage, chose a Japanese term for being paralyzed as the gene's name.

Words formed from shibire

Questions about shibire

What does shibire mean?
Shibire means a gene found in Drosophila, its homolog of the dynamin gene.
What part of speech is shibire?
Shibire is a noun.

Words near shibire in the dictionary

  1. shibilant
  2. shibilants
  3. Shibin
  4. Shibin al-Kawm
  5. Shibin El Kom
  6. shibire
  7. shibire(ts)
  8. shibkovite
  9. Shibley
  10. Shibleys
  11. shiboleth

Source and license

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