Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Lysozyme
/ˈlaɪsəzaɪm/noun
An enzyme in tears, saliva and egg white that breaks open bacterial cell walls.
The Greek roots
λύσις
lýsis
loosening, dissolving
ζύμη
zýmē
leaven, ferment
Literally: “dissolving ferment”
The story of the word
Alexander Fleming named it in 1922 after mucus from his own cold dripped onto a culture plate and cleared the bacteria growing there. Six years later a second accident on a second plate gave him penicillin. Zymē is plain bread leaven, and it sits inside enzyme, which means in the leaven.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1922
Same family
enzymelysisanalysisparalysis
In a sentence
Egg white is loaded with lysozyme, which is part of why an intact egg keeps so long.