primitive cell

American  

noun

Crystallography.

1. a unit cell containing no points of the lattice except at the corners of the cell.

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Etymology

Origin of primitive cell

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

As it began to divide, cancer genes took over and the single primitive cell barreled forward into a massive tumor.

From New York Times

Jack Szostak and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston have taken a different approach, enclosing RNA molecules in fatty-acid vesicles as an early step towards the creation of a primitive cell.

From Nature

It is the life-basis, the primitive cell of the aggregate of cities and bodies politic.

From Project Gutenberg

We think that a primitive cell has to have two parts.

From New York Times

For instance, we’ve made progress on the question of how you make a primitive cell membrane.

From New York Times