supercoil

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *úp

Proto-Indo-European *-er

Proto-Indo-European *upér

Proto-Italic *super

Latin super

Latin super-lbor.

English super-

English coil

English supercoil

From super- + coil.

Pronunciation

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Noun

supercoil (plural supercoils)

1. (genetics) A coil of the DNA helix upon itself, such as a figure eight.

Related terms

• supercoiling

See also

• topoisomerase
• DNA supercoil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

supercoil (third-person singular simple present supercoils, present participle supercoiling, simple past and past participle supercoiled)

1. (genetics) To twist circular DNA into a supercoil.
   • 1995, Sara J. Felts, “Assembly and Transcription of Chromatin Templates Using RNA Polymerase III”, in Martin J. Tymms, editor, In Vitro Transcription and Translation Protocols‎^[1], →ISBN, page 58:

     After deproteination, the migration of the assembled form II DNA will remain unchanged, appearing not to have been supercoiled by nucleosomes.

Anagrams

• Lupercios, superloci