Endotoxin

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any toxin secreted by a microorganism and released into the surrounding environment only when it dies.

    "It may resemble the factor 5 in Salmonella, a heat-labile determinant on the endotoxin molecule which, because of its superficial location, blocks the agglutination reaction of the deeper heat-stable O antigens in the same way as do the Vi and K antigens."

  2. 2
    a toxin that is confined inside the microorganisms and is released only when the microorganisms are broken down or die wordnet

Example

More examples

"It may resemble the factor 5 in Salmonella, a heat-labile determinant on the endotoxin molecule which, because of its superficial location, blocks the agglutination reaction of the deeper heat-stable O antigens in the same way as do the Vi and K antigens."

Etymology

From endo- + toxin.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.