Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The third stage of the prophase of meiosis, during which the homologous chromosomes become short and thick and divide into four distinct chromatids.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Biol.) The third stage of the prophase of meiosis, the stage in which the pairing of homologous chromosomes has been completed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun biology The third prophase of meiosis, during which the chromosomes shorten and divide into four chromatids

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the third stage of the prophase of meiosis

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French pachytène : Greek pakhus, thick + French -tène, ribbon (from Latin taenia; see taenia).]

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Examples

  • Each chromosome is identifiable by its relative length, by the location of its centromere, which is readily observed at the pachytene stage, and by the individuality of the chromomeres strung along the length of each chromosome.

    Nobel Lecture The Significance of Responses of the Genome to Challenge 1983

  • By 1931, however, means of studying the "string" in some detail was provided by newly developed methods of examining the ten chromosomes of the maize complement in microsporocytes at the pachytene stage of meiosis.

    Nobel Lecture The Significance of Responses of the Genome to Challenge 1983

  • The increase in clustered cells, is probably attributable in part to the recently described re-clustering of the centromeres at the side-by-side spindle pole bodies right after pachytene

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles David Obeso et al. 2010

  • The increase in clustered cells, is probably attributable in part to the recently described re-clustering of the centromeres at the side-by-side spindle pole bodies right after pachytene

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles David Obeso et al. 2010

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