Biology Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Biology, including plants, animals, and the study of them. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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bio-ink n. The team’s research involves printers that place bio-ink onto successive layers of gel. On February 16, the team reported that cells had self-assembled, which is essential to creating “organ modules” that could be used to test drugs—or to create entire organs fit for transplanting. [English Biology Body Technology] [full cite] (Mar. 9, 2007)

bio-ink n. Here’s how it works: A customized milling machine prints a small sheet of bio-paper. This “paper” is a variable gel composed of modified gelatin and hyaluronan, a sugar-rich material. Bio-ink blots—each a little ball of cellular material a few hundred microns in diameter—are then printed onto the paper. The process is repeated as many times as needed, the sheets stacked on top of each other. [English Biology Body Technology] [full cite] (Mar. 9, 2007)

bioborg n. We’re strange animals—animals that have modified their minds with external technologies. Even without the technologies we’re what I call “bioborgs.” We have toolkit brains containing beautifully coordinated subsystems that get on with the job of interacting with the world, only sometimes reporting back to consciousness. [English Biology Technology] [full cite] (Jun. 19, 2006)

biobrick n. Rob Carlson notes that the emerging biotechnology of using standardized, modular biological parts to assemble synthetic organisms (or “genetically engineered machines”) is already seeing its first intellectual property dust-up. From early on, these standardized, modular biological parts (SMBPs) have been referred to as “biobricks”—a pretty common-sense term, evoking both the classic image of basic components for building structures and the snap-together, make-what-you-want construction fun of LEGO. It was so common sense that the organization seeking to create and referee standards decided to call itself the BioBricks Foundation (BBF), and to slap a trademark on the term “biobrick.” The BBF is now actively admonishing people who use “biobrick” in a generic way to describe SMBPs. [English Biology] [full cite] (Oct. 10, 2007)

biodigital cloning n. Scientists have an idea of how teleportation would work for people. The person would first have to be destroyed—yes, destroyed. But it’s a good kind of “destroyed.” The teleporter would map the person’s body, genetic makeup, memories and so on. An exact copy of the person would then be reassembled at his or her destination. The process, called biodigital cloning, would kill a person and make a copy at the same time. [English Biology Science Jargon] [full cite] (Oct. 31, 2006)

biomagnify v. When consumed by living organisms and passed along the food chain, the pollutants become “biomagnified” and can reach dangerously high concentrations, a particular risk if / when their host fishes find their way onto our dinner plates. [English Biology] [full cite] (Jun. 14, 2008)

biophony n. Krause coined the term, “biophony,” referring to the biotic (group of animals living together) symphony in an ecosystem. [English Biology Environment Science] [full cite] (Jul. 9, 2004)

blebbing n. Here, we show that Dictyostelium cells moving in a physiological milieu continuously produce “blebs” at their leading edges, and demonstrate that focal blebbing contributes greatly to their locomotion. Blebs are well-characterized spherical hyaline protrusions that occur when a patch of cell membrane detaches from its supporting cortex. Their formation requires the activity of myosin II, and their physiological contribution to cell motility has not been fully appreciated. We find that pseudopodia extension, cell body retraction and overall cell displacement are reduced under conditions that prevent blebbing, including high osmolarity and blebbistatin, and in myosin-II-null cells. [English Biology Science] [full cite] (Nov. 19, 2006)

brooming n. “It had the very distinctive signs of an infestation,” said Garlock, Otsego Conservation District (OCD) forester, of the sickly tree’s symptoms. Most noticeable were clusters of small branches desperately forming on dying branches in a process called “brooming.” [English Biology Environment] [full cite] (Sep. 24, 2006)

bucket biologist n. There’s a term for people who transplant fish into a body of water where they don’t belong: They’re called “bucket biologists.” [English Animals, Insects, & Birds Biology Science Slang] [full cite] (Aug. 31, 2006)

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