Biorepositories

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Facilities or systems designed for the storage and management of biological samples for research and medical purposes
2. Organized collections where specimens of biological origin are preserved for future study and experimentation
3. Storage centers that maintain biological materials, enabling researchers to access samples for a variety of scientific investigations

Etymology: This is a plain compound with no memorable story behind it: "bio-" combined with "repository". The first part comes from Ancient Greek "bios", meaning "life", which reached modern English through the combining form "bio-" that scientists began attaching to many words in the 19th and 20th centuries. The second part, "repository", is an older English word for a place where things are stored, borrowed from Latin "repositorium", a storehouse, from "reponere", to put back or store away. Joined together, the two halves describe a store of living material. The compound is a modern technical coinage, built from classical parts, and its meaning follows directly from them: a repository for biological samples. The plural "biorepositories" simply adds the regular English "-es" ending to "biorepository".

Synonyms: biobanks, biological repositories, tissue banks, sample banks, genetic banks