Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various water-soluble protein derivatives obtained by partial hydrolysis of a protein by an acid or enzyme during digestion and used in culture media in bacteriology.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The general name of a class of albuminoids into which the nitrogenous elements of food (such as albumin, fibrin, casein, etc.) are converted by the action of the gastric or of the pancreatic juice.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The soluble polypeptides produced by hydrolysis of protein; specifically the soluble peptides into which food is transformed by the action of the gastric and pancreatic juices. Peptones are also formed from protein matter by the action of boiling water and boiling dilute acids.
  • noun Collectively, in a broader sense, all the products resulting from the solution of proteinaceous matter in either gastric or pancreatic juice. In this case, however, intermediate products (albumose bodies), such as antialbumose, hemialbumose, etc., are mixed with the true peptones. Also termed albuminose.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biochemistry Any water-soluble product, a mixture of polypeptides and amino acids formed by the partial hydrolysis of protein.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of various water-soluble compounds that form by hydrolysis in the digestion of proteins to amino acids

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[German Pepton, from Greek peptos, digested, from peptein, to digest; see pekw- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • Is it _pepsin_, the active principle of the gastric juice, which converts proteids into peptone, that is wanting, or is there a deficiency of _pancreatin_?

    The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred and Fifty Thousand Ray Vaughn Pierce 1877

  • With weaker doses of antigen and with antigens that are harmless or practically so, such as peptone, the anaphylactic leucocytosis does not last as long but is nevertheless pronounced.

    Charles Richet - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • To mention examples, blood serum solidified at a suitable temperature is a highly suitable medium, and various media are made with extract of meat as a basis, with the addition of gelatine or agar as solidifying agents and of non-coagulable proteids (commercial "peptone") to make up for proteids lost by coagulation in the preparation.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

  • This is because the pancreatic ferment (trypsin) has digested the casein into "peptone," which does not curdle.

    A Practical Physiology Albert F. Blaisdell

  • Two hours later, Neil Noakes scraped a heavily inoculated 4 day culture plate of Helicobacter and dispersed the bacteria in alkaline peptone water a kind of meat broth used to keep bacteria alive.

    The Emperor of All Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee 2010

  • Two hours later, Neil Noakes scraped a heavily inoculated 4 day culture plate of Helicobacter and dispersed the bacteria in alkaline peptone water a kind of meat broth used to keep bacteria alive.

    The Emperor of All Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee 2010

  • Two hours later, Neil Noakes scraped a heavily inoculated 4 day culture plate of Helicobacter and dispersed the bacteria in alkaline peptone water a kind of meat broth used to keep bacteria alive.

    The Emperor of All Maladies Siddhartha Mukherjee 2010

  • I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.

    Science Fiction Hall of Fame Various, 1973

  • He began his investigations into the constitution of the cell nucleus at the end of the seventies, and in the nineties he turned more and more to the study of the proteins, the alterations in proteins during transformation into peptone, the effects of a phenetol diet on the urine, the peptonic components of the cells, the simplest proteins, etc.

    Albrecht Kossel - Biography 1967

  • A quantity of peptone equal to 0.005 per kilo live weight will still give leucocytosis and bring about either immunity or anaphylaxis.

    Charles Richet - Nobel Lecture 1967

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