-gonium
1 Americannoun
plural
goniacombining form
Usage
What does -gonium mean? The combining form -gonium is used like a suffix meaning “gonium,” meaning "the germ cell during the phase marked by mitosis." The form -gonium is also used more generally to mean "seed" or "reproductive cell." It is occasionally used in scientific terms, especially in biology.The form -gonium comes from Greek gónos, meaning “seed, generation.”
Etymology
Origin of gonium
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Whereas Volvox individuals have 500 to 60,000 cells arranged in a hollow sphere, some relatives, such as the Gonium species, have as few as four to 16 cells; others are completely unicellular.
From Science Magazine
The volvocine species Gonium pectorale — whose genome was just sequenced for the first time as part of the study — is right smack in the middle of that path, so much so it's pretty much in evolutionary purgatory between the two stages.
From Washington Post
When Olson, who teaches evolutionary genomics at Kansas State University, removed the gene from a Gonium and put it in its unicellular relative, Chlamydomonas, the formerly single-celled organisms started clumping together to form colonies.
From Washington Post
My mind swept back over evolution from star-dust to Kartabo compound, from Gonium to man, and to these leaf-cutting ants.
From Project Gutenberg
First a swimming lily, Stentor, a solitary animal bloom, twenty-five to the inch; Cothurnia, a double lily, and Gonium, with a quartet of cells clinging tremulously together, progressing unsteadily—materially toward the rim of my field of vision—in the evolution of earthly life toward sponges, peripatus, ants and man.
From Project Gutenberg
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.