opisthokont

plural opisthokonts

1. biologyAny of very many eukaryotes, including animals and fungi, whose flagellate cells (if any) propel themselves with a single posterior flagellum.

   However, these characters are only sporadically found among the various opisthokont allies (described above).

   2004, Joel Cracraft, Michael J. Donoghue, Assembling the Tree of Life, Oxford University Press (USA), →ISBN, page 68, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   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).

   2002, Michael Breitenbach, Reto Crameri, Samuel B. Lehrer, Fungal Allergy and Pathogenicity, Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers, →ISBN, page 211, →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.

   2006, Laura Katz Olson, Debashish Bhattacharya, Genomics and Evolution of Microbial Eukaryotes, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 13, →ISBN