HETEROZYGOTE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does heterozygote mean? 

• HETEROZYGOTE (noun)
  The noun HETEROZYGOTE has 1 sense:

1. (genetics) an organism having two different alleles of a particular gene and so giving rise to varying offspring

  Familiarity information: HETEROZYGOTE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HETEROZYGOTE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(genetics) an organism having two different alleles of a particular gene and so giving rise to varying offspring

Classified under:

Nouns denoting body parts

Hypernyms ("heterozygote" is a kind of...):

fertilized ovum; zygote ((genetics) the diploid cell resulting from the union of a haploid spermatozoon and ovum (including the organism that develops from that cell))

Domain category:

genetic science; genetics (the branch of biology that studies heredity and variation in organisms)

 Context examples 

The latter is called a compound heterozygote.

(Heterozygosity, NCI Dictionary)

AT heterozygosity is estimated to occur in more than 2% of the U.S. population; heterozygotes exhibit increased radiation sensitivity and are at increased risk for several types of cancer.

(Ataxia Telangiectasia Syndrome, NCI Thesaurus)

An alteration in a DNA sequence from a eukaryotic or a prokaryotic organism that results in the expression of a variant gene product that inhibits the function of the related wild-type gene product in heterozygotes.

(Dominant-Negative Mutation Abnormality, NCI Thesaurus)