epistasis
noun
Example Sentences
William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 10 Dec. 2021 Another, though, is that the fates of mutations can be linked — an effect that population geneticists call synergistic, or narrowing, epistasis. Quanta Magazine, 13 July 2017 Most recent newsletter Kondrashov has investigated the implications of synergistic epistasis with theoretical studies. Quanta Magazine, 13 July 2017 Word History
epi- + -stasis, after earlier epistatic, by analogy with metastatic : metastatis and like pairs
Note: The term epistatic was introduced, along with hypostatic, by the English biologist William Bateson (1861-1926) in "Facts Limiting the Theory of Heredity" ("Address delivered at the International Zoological Congress, before the Section of Cytology and Heredity, August 23, 1907"), Science, series 2, vol. 26 (July-December, 1907), issue of November 15, 1907, p. 653: "Till lately we spoke of the relations between the gray color of the mouse to the black color in terms of dominance …We can perhaps best express the relation between the gray and the black by the use of metaphor 'higher and lower,' and I therefore suggest the term epistatic as applicable to characters which have to be, as it were, lifted off in order to permit the lower or hypostatic character to appear."
circa 1917, in the meaning defined above
Medical Definition
epistasis
noun