Peptidoglycolipid

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A complex biological molecule made of a peptidoglycan structure chemically linked to one or more lipid chains, found in bacterial cell envelopes
2. A compound in which the cross-linked sugar-peptide polymer of bacterial cell walls is bonded to a fatty lipid portion
3. Any hybrid macromolecule that couples the peptide-and-sugar framework of peptidoglycan with a lipid moiety in microbial membranes

Etymology: Peptidoglycolipid is a technical coinage built from two existing scientific terms: "peptido-", the combining form for peptides (short chains of amino acids), and "glycolipid", a molecule in which a sugar is bonded to a lipid. Put together, the name describes a molecule carrying both a peptide component and a glycolipid component, and it belongs to the vocabulary of microbiology rather than everyday English. The word's meaning is tied to the bacterial cell envelope. Many bacteria surround themselves with layers of sugars and amino acids, and some species also carry lipid-bearing molecules in those layers. Naming the compound by its parts lets a researcher see at once which building blocks it contains, which is the usual logic behind chemical names of this type. Because the word is assembled from established terms rather than inherited from older languages, its history is simply that of its two components. The combining forms themselves are ordinary scientific building blocks, and the compound follows the same pattern used for many other molecules named by their constituents.