Etymology

thrombospondin

T1H4R1O1M3B3O1S1P3O1N1D2I1N1

Today it means: Any of a family of glycoproteins secreted into the extracellular matrix by various types of cell, which play a role in cellular adhesion in processes including thrombocyte aggregation, tumor metastasis, and angiogenesis. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

From thrombin + respond + -in, coined in a 1972 paper by Baenziger et al., named due to its sensitivity to thrombin.https://web.archive.org/web/20060223143336/http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/247/9/2723

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.