Look up obligate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Obligate could be:

• An adjective meaning "by necessity" (antonym facultative) and used mostly in biology, especially in the phrases:
  • Obligate parasite, a parasite that cannot survive without its host
  • Obligate intracellular parasite, a parasitic microorganism that cannot reproduce outside their host cell
  • Obligate aerobe, an organism that cannot survive without oxygen
  • Obligate anaerobe, an organism that cannot survive in the presence of oxygen
  • Obligate air-breather, a complex organism which obtains required oxygen directly from the atmosphere through respiration rather than extracting dissolved oxygen from water, as, for example, the South American lungfish

[edit] See also

• (antonym) Facultative

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