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Strain (biology)
 
 
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In biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
, strain is a low-level taxonomic rank
Taxonomic rank

Taxonomic rank, taxonomic category, rank, or category is an abstract term used in the scientific classification, or taxonomy, of organisms....
 used in three related ways.

rain is a genetic
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
 variant or subtype of a microorganism (e.g. virus
Virus

A virus is a Optical microscope#Limitations of light microscopes infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell . Viruses infect all cellular life....
 or bacterium or fungus). For example, a "flu strain" is a certain biological form of the influenza
Influenza

Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease that affects birds and mammals caused by RNA viruses of the biological family Orthomyxoviridae ....
 or "flu" virus. Compare clade
Clade

A clade is a term used in modern alpha taxonomy, the scientific classification of living and fossil organisms, to describe a monophyletic group, defined as a group consisting of a single common ancestor and all its descendants.The term "monophyletic group" is used in this article in the conventional sense of "an a...
.

term has no official ranking status in botany; the term refers to the collective descendants produced from a common ancestor that share a uniform morphological or physiological character.






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In biology
Biology

Biology is a branch of the natural sciences concerned with the study of living organisms and their interaction with each other and their environment ....
, strain is a low-level taxonomic rank
Taxonomic rank

Taxonomic rank, taxonomic category, rank, or category is an abstract term used in the scientific classification, or taxonomy, of organisms....
 used in three related ways.

Microbiology/Virology

A strain is a genetic
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
 variant or subtype of a microorganism (e.g. virus
Virus

A virus is a Optical microscope#Limitations of light microscopes infectious agent that is unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell . Viruses infect all cellular life....
 or bacterium or fungus). For example, a "flu strain" is a certain biological form of the influenza
Influenza

Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease that affects birds and mammals caused by RNA viruses of the biological family Orthomyxoviridae ....
 or "flu" virus. Compare clade
Clade

A clade is a term used in modern alpha taxonomy, the scientific classification of living and fossil organisms, to describe a monophyletic group, defined as a group consisting of a single common ancestor and all its descendants.The term "monophyletic group" is used in this article in the conventional sense of "an a...
.

Plants

The term has no official ranking status in botany; the term refers to the collective descendants produced from a common ancestor that share a uniform morphological or physiological character. A strain is a designated group of offspring that have descended from a modified plant, produced either by conventional breeding or by biotechnological means or result from genetic mutation. As an example, some rice
Rice

Rice is a staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in tropical Latin America, and East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, making it the second-most consumed cereal grain, after maize....
 strains are made by inserting new genetic
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
 material into a rice plant, all the descendant
Descendant

The term descendant or descendent may refer to:*A type of object that developed from another object existing before it.*Descendant, a type of kinship...
s of the genetically modified rice plant are a strain with a unique genetic code
Genetic code

The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded in genetic material is Translation into proteins by living cell s. The code defines a mapping between tri-nucleotide sequences, called codons, and amino acids....
 that is passed on to later generations; the strain designation, which is normally a number or a formal name, covers all the plants that descent from the originally modified plant. The rice plants in the strain can be breed to other rice strains or cultivar
Cultivar

A cultivar is a cultivated plant that has been selected and given a unique name because of its decorative or useful characteristics; it is usually distinct from similar plants and when Plant propagation it retains those characteristics....
s, and if desirable plants are produced, these are further breed to stabilize the desirable traits; the stabilized plants that can be propagated and come true, are given a cultivar name and released into production to be used by farmers.

Rodents

A mouse
Mouse

A mouse is a small animal that belongs to one of numerous species of rodents. The best known mouse species is the House Mouse . It is also a popular pet....
 or a rat
Rat

Rats are various medium sized, long-tailed rodents of the Family Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus....
 strain is a group of animals that is genetically uniform. Strains are used in laboratory experiments. Mouse strains can be inbred, mutated or genetically engineered, while rat strains are usually inbred.

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