supercoil
supercoil noun: a coil of the DNA helix upon itself, such as a figure eight.
Noun
supercoil (plural supercoils)
- A coil of the DNA helix upon itself, such as a figure eight.
Verb
supercoil (third-person singular simple present supercoils, present participle supercoiling, simple past and past participle supercoiled)
- To twist circular DNA into a supercoil.
- After deproteination, the migration of the assembled form II DNA will remain unchanged, appearing not to have been supercoiled by nucleosomes.1995, Sara J. Felts, “Assembly and Transcription of Chromatin Templates Using RNA Polymerase III”, in Martin J. Tymms, editor, In Vitro Transcription and Translation Protocols, →ISBN, page 58
Forms of supercoil
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | supercoils |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | supercoils |
| present participle | supercoiling |
| past participle | supercoiled |
| past | supercoiled |
Origin of supercoil
From super- + coil.
Questions about supercoil
- What does supercoil mean?
- Supercoil means a coil of the DNA helix upon itself, such as a figure eight.
- What part of speech is supercoil?
- Supercoil can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of supercoil?
- The plural of supercoil is supercoils.
Words near supercoil in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: supercoil (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-supercoil.wav.
Cite this entry: “supercoil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/supercoil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.