holliday junction
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.86 in modern English
32
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
5
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A junction between four strands of DNA. They are a key intermediate in many types of genetic recombination, as well as in double-strand break repair.
Etymology
Named after British molecular biologist Robin Holliday (1932–2014), who proposed it in 1964 to account for homologous recombination in Ustilago maydis.