chitin
Americannoun
noun
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Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of chitin
1830–40; < French chitine < Greek chit ( ṓn ) tunic, chiton + French -ine -in 2
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Vocabulary lists containing chitin
Biochemistry
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"The Hermit's Story," Vocabulary from the short story
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Microbiology - High School
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Example Sentences
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Chitin is the primary building material both for the exoskeleton of insects and for the bristles of bristle worms such as the marine annelid worm Platynereis dumerilii.
From Science Daily • May 13, 2024
Chitin is the second most abundant biological polymer on Earth, with an estimated 100 billion tons produced each year by fungi or creatures like insects and crustaceans, second to cellulose which is created by plants.
From Science Daily • Feb. 21, 2024
Chitin is similar to amylase, but with sulfur linkages between the monomers.
From Textbooks • Jun. 9, 2022
Chitin is also a major component of fungal cell walls; fungi are neither animals nor plants and form a kingdom of their own in the domain Eukarya.
From Textbooks • Jun. 9, 2022
Chitin, a white horny substance found in the exoskeleton of several invertebrate animals.
From The Nuttall Encyclopædia Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge by Nuttall, P. Austin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.