tissue culture

Culture \Cul"ture\ (k?l"t?r; 135), n. [F. culture, L. cultura,
   fr. colere to till, cultivate; of uncertain origin. Cf.
   {Colony}.]
   1. The act or practice of cultivating, or of preparing the
      earth for seed and raising crops by tillage; as, the
      culture of the soil.
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   2. The act of, or any labor or means employed for, training,
      disciplining, or refining the moral and intellectual
      nature of man; as, the culture of the mind.
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            If vain our toil
            We ought to blame the culture, not the soil. --Pepe.
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   3. The state of being cultivated; result of cultivation;
      physical improvement; enlightenment and discipline
      acquired by mental and moral training; civilization;
      refinement in manners and taste.
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            What the Greeks expressed by their paidei`a, the
            Romans by their humanitas, we less happily try to
            express by the more artificial word culture. --J. C.
                                                  Shairp.
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            The list of all the items of the general life of a
            people represents that whole which we call its
            culture.                              --Tylor.
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   4. (Biol.)
      (a) The cultivation of bacteria or other organisms (such
          as fungi or eukaryotic cells from mulitcellular
          organisms) in artificial media or under artificial
          conditions.
      (b) The collection of organisms resulting from such a
          cultivation.

   Note: The growth of cells obtained from multicellular animals
         or plants in artificial media is called {tissue
         culture}.
         [Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]

   Note: The word is used adjectively with the above senses in
         many phrases, such as: culture medium, any one of the
         various mixtures of gelatin, meat extracts, etc., in
         which organisms cultivated; culture flask, culture
         oven, culture tube, gelatin culture, plate culture,
         etc.
         [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

   5. (Cartography) Those details of a map, collectively, which
      do not represent natural features of the area delineated,
      as names and the symbols for towns, roads, houses,
      bridges, meridians, and parallels.
      [Webster 1913 Suppl.]

   {Culture fluid}, {Culture medium} a fluid in which
      microscopic organisms are made to develop, either for
      purposes of study or as a means of modifying their
      virulence. If the fluid is gelled by, for example, the use
      of agar, it then is called, depending on the vessel in
      which the gelled medium is contained, a plate, a slant, or
      a stab.
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