scission
/ˈsɪʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun] technical
1The action or state of cutting or being cut, in particular:Budding and scission of a deflated vesicle into two smaller spherical daughters were sometimes observed....
- The gift of her language, therefore, is not one of exfoliation, but of continual scission and concision.
- The author argued that the scission between nature and culture is actually a false one, based on erroneous assumptions about the underlying ‘constitution’ of these bipolar terms.
1.1chiefly Biochemistry Breakage of a chemical bond, especially one in a long chain molecule so that two smaller chains result: this bacteriophage catalyses scission of DNA strands...
- Strand scission in DNA can result from the production of a carbon-based radical following hydrogen atom abstraction from deoxyribose.
- Indeed, the assembled repair complex just before strand scission (loss of antibody binding) is composed of multiple subunits.
- These trimetal clusters cleaved DNA through single-strand scission by use of UV light as the trigger.
1.2 [count noun] A division or split between people or parties; a schism: a scission arose between the socialists and those further to the left...
- For them increasing poverty and social scission seems at best a distant rumour.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French, or from late Latin scissio(n-), from scindere 'cut, cleave'.