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Powered by Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Healthcare Consumers |
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vector (vek´tәr) a carrier, especially an animal such as an arthropod that transfers an infective agent from one host to another. Examples are the mosquito that carries the malaria parasite Plasmodium between humans, and the tsetse fly that carries trypanosomes from other animals to humans. Dogs, bats, and other animals are vectors that transmit the rabies virus to humans. cloning vector. a quantity that has magnitude, direction, and sense (positivity or negativity), and is commonly represented by a straight line resembling an arrow; the length of the line denotes magnitude, the arrowhead denotes sense, and the position of the line with respect to an axis of reference denotes direction. adj., vector´ial., adj. biological vector
an animal vector in whose body the pathogenic organism develops and multiplies before being transmitted to the next host. cloning vector
a DNA molecule, such as a plasmid or bacteriophage that can carry a fragment of foreign DNA into a host cell and create many
copies of itself and the foreign DNA; it must include a site into which the DNA fragment can be inserted, sequences allowing
it to replicate itself, and one or more selectable markers, such as a gene coding for resistance to an antibiotic. mechanical vector
an animal vector not essential to the life cycle of the parasite.
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