photocyclen.
/ˈfəʊtəʊˌsʌɪkl/, U.S. /ˈfoʊdoʊˌsaɪk(ə)l/ Biology and Biochemistry.
1. A chemical, physiological, or ecological cycle induced by changes in light levels; esp. a photoperiodic cycle in plants; a sequence of structural changes that some molecules undergo in response to light.
ΚΠ
1953 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 39 906 The photoperiodic behavior of short day plants is interpretable in terms of the photocycle if we assume that the flowering response is governed by the level of ES within the leaf.
1984 Biochemistry 23 5556 The effects of hydrostatic pressure on the kinetics of the photocycle of purple membrane from Halobacterium halobium were studied.
1995 Sci. Amer. (U.K. ed.) Mar. 69/3 One array of lasers, all set to green and called paging beams, activates the photocycle of the protein.
2002 European Biophysics Jrnl. 31 504 (title) Molecular dynamics simulations of photoactive yellow protein (PYP) in three states of its photocycle.
2. A cycle of light and darkness (whether natural or produced experimentally).
ΚΠ
1976 Science 16 Jan. 198 Activity becomes sporadic, occurring in bursts..in both the dark and light phases of the photocycle.
1990 Jrnl. Plankton Res. 12 1289 The animals were reared individually in test tubes each containing 5 ml of the rearing medium in an incubator at 23 ± 0.5°C under a 16–18 light–dark photocycle.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, March 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1953