endosymbiont

American  

[en-doh-sim-bee-ont, -bahy-] / ˌɛn doʊˈsɪm biˌɒnt, -baɪ- /

Also endosymbiote

noun

1. a symbiont that lives within the body of the host.

---

Etymology

Origin of endosymbiont

First recorded in 1935–40; endo- + symbiont

Example Sentences

Instead of being digested, the bacterium took up permanent residence within the other organism as what biologists call an endosymbiont.

From Scientific American

But there are many more recent, looser endosymbioses where the origin of foreign genes is easier to identify, says John McCutcheon, an evolutionary cell biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe who wrote about endosymbiont evolution in the 2021 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology.

From Scientific American

Eva Nowack, who leads a lab at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, discovered that Paulinellla’s genome now contains genes from the endosymbiont along with others that were acquired through horizontal gene transfer.

From Scientific American

Remarkably, the endosymbiont imports more than 400 proteins from the host nucleus, so it also must have evolved a complicated protein transport system like the mealybugs.

From Scientific American

Researchers sequencing the genomes of modern-day relatives of the first eukaryotes have found many unexpected genes that don’t seem to come from either the host or the endosymbiont.

From Scientific American