Glossary for NanoBiotechnology

autoantibody:
Antibody that reacts with a molecule in the animal that produced the antibody; can cause autoimmune disease.

autocatalysis:
Reaction that is catalyzed by one of its products, creating a positive feedback (self-amplifying) effect on the reaction rate.

automated engineering:
Engineering design done by a computer system, generating detailed designs from broad specifications with little or no human help.

autoradiography (radioautography):
Technique in which a radioactive object produces an image of itself on a photographic film. The image is called an autoradiograph or autoradiogram.

autosome:
Any chromosome other than a sex chromosome.

auxin:
Class of plant hormones.

axon:
Long nerve cell process that is capable of rapidly conducting nerve impulses over long distances so as to deliver signals to other cells.

axonal transport:
Directed transport of organelles and molecules along a nerve cell axon; can be anterograde (outward from the cell body) or retrograde (back toward the cell body).

axoneme:
Bundle of microtubules and associated proteins that forms the core of cilia and flagella in a eucaryotic cell and is responsible for their movements.

axoplasm:
Cytoplasm of the axon of a nerve cell, especially after it has been extruded from the axon.

Parts of the glossary are from the following book:
Copyright 1983, 1989, 1994 From "Molecular Biology of the Cell" by Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, James D. Watson. Reproduced by permission of Routledge, Inc., part of The Taylor & Francis Group.