Obligate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up obligate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Obligate could be:

  • A verb (see obligation)
  • An adjective meaning "by necessity" (antonym facultative) and used mostly in biology, especially in the phrases:
    • Obligate parasite, a parasite that cannot survive without its host
    • Obligate aerobe, an organism that cannot survive without oxygen
    • Obligate anaerobe, an organism that cannot survive in the presence of oxygen
    • Obligate air-breather, a complex organism which obtains required oxygen directly from the atmosphere through respiration rather than extracting dissolved oxygen from water, as, for example, the South American lungfish

[edit] See also

  • Facultative