biocode

See also: BioCode and bio-code

English

Etymology

From bio- +‎ code.

Noun

biocode (plural biocodes)

1. A unified taxonomic system, such as the BioCode.
   • 1991, G.A. Land, M.R. McGinnis, I.F. Salkin, “Evaluation of commercial kits and systems for the rapid identification and biotyping of yeasts”, in Rapid Methods and Automation in Microbiology and Immunology:

     The most valuable innovation of the new API 20C was the development of the biocode system.

   • 1994, Geoff Stansfield, John Mathias, Gordon Reid, Manual of Natural History Curatorship, →ISBN, page 92:

     Pettitt (1990) has advocated the use of sort/search codes to aid the computerisation of specimen records, and Heppell (1990) has outlined a biocode system for taxonomic names.

   • 2005, ASM News - Volume 71, Issues 1-6, page 276:

     A prerequisite for such a biocode is to compile a list of all valid names for living and extinct beings.

2. A single numeric value calculated from a collection of biometric data; profile.
   • 1992, Mycopathologia, page 13:

     Based on the coded values for sensitivity or resistance to the six chemicals, a six-digit biocode or profile was prepared.

   • 2006, Elmer W. Koneman, Koneman's Color Atlas and Textbook of Diagnostic Microbiology, →ISBN:

     Some biocodes for new species give identifications for species already included in the database. In these cases, additional tests must be performed to arrive at the correct identification. However, some new species do generate biocodes that are unique.

   • 2014, Mary Louise Turgeon, Linne & Ringsrud's Clinical Laboratory Science, →ISBN:

     These scores are added to generate a biocode that can be matched to a database of biocodes to give the identity of the organism tested.

3. An arbitrary number or string for identifying a biological organism.
   • 1983, David Heppell, Shelagh Mary Smith, Recent Cephalopoda in the collections of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh:

     The number given before the generic name is the biocode used in the museum for cataloguing purposes.

4. The genomes of one or more interacting organisms.
   • 2008, Jason Egroff, The Tento Saga: Mankind's Perilous Journey, →ISBN, page 202:

     "God code doesn't necessarily prove that God exists,” Schiller explained. “The God code is merely a massive compilation of thousands of different biocodes that have been collected by Tento's main bioscanner at TIS."

   • 2015, Dawn Field, Neil Davies, Biocode: The New Age of Genomics, →ISBN:

     Increasingly, we are moving from sequencing one genome at a time to groups of genomes. In the future, we might all have our complete biocode sequenced (all our genomes). A biocode could be the genomes of any organism, a bioreactor, a building, or a larger system, such as the island of Moorea.

5. Alternative form of bio-code
   • 1997, South Asian Language Review - Volumes 7-8, page 86:

     The stirring of the cognitive potential means that the biocodes within the body-mind organism are made to respond to the demands of the communicational setting.

   • 2004, Japanese Morning Press Highlights - Issue 6, page 90:

     However, the government's plan to manage and control individual biocodes, such as fingerprints, will likely cause controversy.

   • 2013, Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopronographic Era, →ISBN, page 394:

     The pharmacopornographic entrepreneurs, who are among the contemporary leaders in global capitalism, are trying to restrict and privatize the biocodes of gender and convert them into rare and naturalized objects by means of legal and market techniques.

6. Any water-soluble bioreactive substance.
   • 1992, United States Congress House. Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Subcommittee on Science, Desalination Research:

     A variety of other biocodes such as ozone may prove to be advantageous in RO systems but have not been adequately studied.

   • 1993, Annals of Warsaw Agricultural University, SGGW-AR:

     Basic preparatory activities aimed to preserve archaeological wood are usually either biocode or stabilizing conservation methods (Dyrkowa, Jagielska 1981).

   • 2008, Emerging Contaminants in U.S. Waters:

     NACWA has also been a participant in discussions with EPA on pennethrin-impregnated clothing and copper and silver biocodes that may create problems for aquatic life.

   • 2017, Saul Tanpepper, Control: The Post-Apocalyptic Thriller:

     But after an administration of nanites preprogrammed with epithelial biocodes cleared him right up, he'd been completely sold on the technology.

Verb

biocode (third-person singular simple present biocodes, present participle biocoding, simple past and past participle biocoded)

1. To encode using biological signals or markers.
   • 2011, Hans-Joachim Gabius, The Sugar Code: Fundamentals of Glycosciences, →ISBN:

     In fact, then there is no reason why complex carbohydrates should shy at competition with nucleic acids and proteins for the top spot in high-density biocoding.

   • 2013, Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopronographic Era, →ISBN, page 160:

     The hormone, then, operates according to a logic of tele-action: the capacity to modify an organ by the emission of biocoded information from some distance away.

   • 2014, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, →ISBN:

     Complex carbohydrates are built for high-density biocoding, which is at par with proteins and nucleic acids and their role and importance is widely being recognized.

2. To classify biological organisms by assigning biocodes to them.
   • 2013, Richard Morgan, The Complete SF Collection, →ISBN:

     And the money's still flooding in, there'll be biocoding work for the next decade.

   • 2013, Charles Arthur Musés, Aspects of the Theory of Artificial Intelligence, →ISBN:

     The selection rule thus gained yields a more logically primal code derivation than Crick's more formal approach, and also provides certain powerful testing criteria, which eventually, will enable us in turn even to supersede them in solving this fundamental biocoding problem.

   • 2016, John Parrington, Redesigning Life: How Genome Editing Will Transform the World, →ISBN:

     Already the first efforts at 'barcoding' entire ecological communities and creating 'genomic observatories' have begun. The future, the authors argue, will involve biocoding the entire planet.