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cresyl

cresyl

9.9
A part of a chemical made from cresol used to make other compounds
  • noun
  • /ˈkrɛsɪl/
  • Specialized
: cresilo
  • In the lab, cresyl is essential for staining specific proteins in brain tissue.

Examples

  • To observe the structure of the cells, they treated the slides with cresyl before analysis.

  • The researchers used cresyl to label the neurons in their tissue samples.

  • After excision of the brains, 28-32 micron horizontal sections were stained with cresyl violet.

    Academic text (1993)

Surface Forms

cresyl singular
cresyls plural

Morphology

cresyl = cresol (semi-transparent) = cresol + yl

The noun denotes the radical/group formed from 'cresol' with the suffix '-yl'; this is transparent to those who know chemical morphology but not to typical learners.

Etymology

The word cresyl names a chemical group and comes from the name cresol, the molecule it is based on. So a cresyl group is the part of a molecule that is 'derived from' cresol, and chemists use the name to show that connection.