noun
- organisms that can synthesize all necessary organic compounds from simple inorganic substances
Usage: biology; microbiology
Examples
- Wild-type bacteria are typically prototrophs that can grow on minimal media.
- The laboratory studied prototrophs to understand basic metabolic pathways.
- Unlike auxotrophs, prototrophs don’t require additional nutrients for growth.
- Researchers compared prototrophs with mutant strains lacking biosynthetic abilities.
- Most prototrophs can survive in environments with only basic carbon and nitrogen sources.
- The experiment used prototrophs as control organisms in the nutritional study.