Prototrophy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The condition of being a prototroph uncountable, usually

    "Spontaneous mutations in bacteria are generally reversible. Consequently, in a medium where prototrophy confers no selective advantage, various auxotrophs (and other mutant types) should accumulate until for each type the number is such that the loss- by mutation to prototrophy should equal the gain by mutation to the corresponding auxotrophic condition."

Example

More examples

"Spontaneous mutations in bacteria are generally reversible. Consequently, in a medium where prototrophy confers no selective advantage, various auxotrophs (and other mutant types) should accumulate until for each type the number is such that the loss- by mutation to prototrophy should equal the gain by mutation to the corresponding auxotrophic condition."

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