Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of a group of water-soluble proteinaceous pigments that occur in red algae and cyanobacteria.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun biochemistry any of a group of highly coloured
pigments found in somephotosynthetic algae ; they are open-chaintetrapyrroles related tomammalian bile pigments
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun water-soluble proteinaceous pigments found in red algae and cyanobacteria
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[phyco– + Latin bīlis, bile + –in.]
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Examples
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Rhodophyta contains the pigment phycobilin, giving it a red color while the group Chrysophaceae contain the pigment fucoxanthin which gives them a golden color.
Phytoplankton 2008
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