Word of the Day:
actin
What It Means
A globular structural protein that polymerizes in a helical fashion to form an actin filament (or microfilament).
One of the six isoforms of actin.
Actin in Context
“Actin has kidney-shaped polypeptide subunits, called globular actin or G actin, which bear the active sites to which the myosin heads attach during contraction.”
Did You Know?
From Ancient Greek ἀκτίς (aktís, “ray”), based on the shape of the filament formed, + -in.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: actin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “actin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/actin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
