Bioreactor

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A vessel or container in which biological organisms or cells are grown under controlled conditions to produce desired substances or materials
2. A container designed to cultivate living organisms for the purpose of generating products through controlled biological processes
3. An apparatus used for nurturing biological agents in a regulated environment to create specific outputs or materials

Etymology: The "bio-" in bioreactor comes from Ancient Greek "bíos", meaning "life", which English adopted as a combining form for words about living things. The "reactor" half descends from Latin "agere", "to do or drive", through its past participle "actus" and the agent suffix "-tor", so a reactor is literally a device that drives something. Its English history is tied to nuclear physics, where "reactor" came to name a machine in which a chain reaction is sustained, and the word later spread to chemistry for any vessel where substances are made to react. Joining the two parts gives a plain compound: a bioreactor is a reactor that works with living material. Rather than a single inventor's coinage, the term was built in modern English from these existing pieces, so it describes the vessel's job directly: a container that drives living cells or organisms to produce a desired substance.

Synonyms: fermentor, biofermentor