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Glite Dictionary
pilin

pilin

1 9.5
A protein that forms tiny hair-like structures on some bacteria
  • noun
  • Specialized
: pilina
  • Oh, God, David, the felonies just keep pilin' up!
  • type pilin
  • IV pilin

Examples

  • J goin' through a tight wind j j the kids are iosin' their minds j j blitzkreig bop j j they're pilin' in the backseat j j they generate steam heat j j we're safe in the backseat j - hey c'mon, man.

    Fear No Evil (1981)

  • Research has shown that specific pilins play a crucial role in the pathogenicity of certain bacteria.

  • He's sick in the hospital, and the bills are just pilin' up.

    Breakfast of Champions (1999)

  • As such, these sequence and structural variations make it likely that an A. baumannii type IV pilin-specific vaccine would fail.

    Academic text (2018)

  • However, the major pilin subunit, fimbrial protein PilA, displays remarkable sequence divergence across species and even between strains.

    Academic text (2018)

  • They don't think nothin' of packin' up their suitcases and pilin' on one of them big steamships, and, swoosh, they're gone, child.

    A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

  • Pili are formed by many pilin proteins that stack together in a helical structure.

  • The main component of the bacterial pili is a pilin, which helps the bacteria adhere to surfaces.

Surface Forms

pilin singular
pilins plural

Morphology

pilin = pilus (opaque) = pilus + in

Although formed by the technical base 'pilus' + the protein-forming suffix '-in', both elements are specialised biomedical terms unlikely to be interpretable by an average B1 learner.

Etymology

The word pilin comes from the Latin word pilus, meaning 'hair'. Scientists used this image because bacteria have thin, hair-like threads called pili, and pilin is the protein that makes those hair-like structures.