opisthokont
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English
Etymology
From opistho- + -kont (“flagellate”) from Ancient Greek κοντός (kontós, “pole”).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ɒˈpɪsθəʊ̆kɒnt/
Noun
opisthokont (plural opisthokonts)
- (biology) Any of very many eukaryotes, including animals and fungi, whose flagellate cells (if any) propel themselves with a single posterior flagellum.
- 2002, Michael Breitenbach, Reto Crameri, Samuel B. Lehrer, Fungal Allergy and Pathogenicity, Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers, →ISBN, page 211, →ISBN:
- Based on a single posterior flagellum (opisthokont), flattened, nondiscoid mitochondrial cristae, a chitinous exoskeleton, storage of glycogen instead of starch, lack of chloroplasts, and the code UGA for tryptophan, not chain termination, in their mitochondria, Cavalier-Smith [54] suggests a common origin of the true fungi with animalia and choanoflagellate protozoa (fig. 1).
- 2004, Joel Cracraft, Michael J. Donoghue, Assembling the Tree of Life, Oxford University Press (USA), →ISBN, page 68, →ISBN:
- However, these characters are only sporadically found among the various opisthokont allies (described above).
- 2006, Laura Katz Olson, Debashish Bhattacharya, Genomics and Evolution of Microbial Eukaryotes, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 13, →ISBN:
- Although the group embraces taxa that are diverse in morphology and life history, cells of undisputed opisthokonts have a single emergent flagellum which projects behind the cells while they swim. This is treated as defining the opisthokont ancestry.