Word.ws English Dictionary

sonic hedgehog

sonic hedgehog noun: a morphogenic protein that controls cell division of adult stem cells and has been implicated in the development of some cancers.

Noun

sonic hedgehog (uncountable)

  1. (capitalized, sometimes) A morphogenic protein that controls cell division of adult stem cells and has been implicated in the development of some cancers.
    Synonyms:
    Shh

Synonyms of sonic hedgehog

Origin of sonic hedgehog

Named after the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog, in reference to the hedgehog signalling pathway, itself from sonic (Japanese ソニック (Sonikku)).

Questions about sonic hedgehog

What does sonic hedgehog mean?
Sonic hedgehog means a morphogenic protein that controls cell division of adult stem cells and has been implicated in the development of some cancers.
What part of speech is sonic hedgehog?
Sonic hedgehog is a noun.

Words near sonic hedgehog in the dictionary

  1. sonic boom
  2. sonic boomed
  3. sonic booming
  4. sonic booms
  5. sonic branding
  6. sonic hedgehog
  7. sonic logo
  8. sonic logos
  9. sonically
  10. sonicate
  11. sonicated

Source and license

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