crossfeed

English

Alternative forms

• xfeed (abbreviation)

Etymology

From cross- +‎ feed.

Noun

crossfeed (plural crossfeeds)

1. (sound) The process of blending the left and right channels of a stereo recording.
2. (aviation, astronautics) The supplying of one fuel tank of an aircraft or rocket with fuel from another, or of an engine with fuel from a tank connected to a different engine.

Verb

crossfeed (third-person singular simple present crossfeeds, present participle crossfeeding, simple past and past participle crossfed)

1. (aviation, astronautics) To supply one fuel tank of an aircraft or rocket with fuel from another, or an engine with fuel from a tank connected to a different engine.
2. (sound) To blend the left and right channels of a stereo recording.
3. (biology) To coexist on a single limiting resource where one strain or species grows on the primary resource and the second grows on the partially degraded resource excreted by the first.
   • 1976, John W. Littlefield, Variation, Senescence, and Neoplasia in Cultured Somatic Cells, →ISBN:

     It is now recognized that crossfeeding does not occur with derivatives of the mouse L-cell line (such as A9) , nor with certain HeLa clones. However, crossfeeding does occur with other heteroploid mouse lines (3T3 and derivatives), hamster BHK-21 cells and derivatives, and diploid human fibroblasts.

   • 1985, Martha Robertson Taylor, Changing the meaning of experience:

     How can the results of crossfeeding trials be used to sequence mutant strains of the bacteria Serratia marsescens in the biosynthetic pathway for the production of prodigiosis?

   • 2010, Michael P. H. Stumpf, Statistical and Evolutionary Analysis of Biological Networks, →ISBN, page 116:

     The emergence of crossfeeding interactions has been observed in long- term evolution experiments on E. coli in chemostats with glucose as the limiting resource