noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Any of a class of water-soluble proteins, present in cyanobacteria and certain algae, that capture light energy which is then passed on to chlorophylls during photosynthesis; the most important constituents of the phycobilisomes. countable, uncountable

Etymology

phyco- (seaweed) + bili-? (bile) + protein

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