agonist

IPA: ˈægʌnɪst

Someone involved in a contest or battle (as in an agon), protagonist.
The muscle that contracts while the other relaxes.
(biochemistry, pharmacology) A molecule that can combine with a receptor on a cell to produce a physiological reaction.

Examples of "agonist" in Sentences

An agonist is a substance that binds to a receptor.
In Western anatomy, these are called agonist and antagonist muscle groups, but I call them balancing muscle groups.
For example, I derived theoretical equations to illustrate how removal of the agonist from the region of the receptor by active uptake or enzymatic destruction could markedly alter the slope of
With that information, he hopes to create a peptide "agonist" - something that would enhance the activity of the CAP2B peptide and prevent the insect from leaving waste (and the parasite) on the wound.
I paid homage in my review to A.J. Clark for his pioneering work in developing receptor theory, I took issue with his hypothesis that response of a tissue to an agonist is proportional to the fraction of receptors occupied by the agonist.
Vilazodone is an anti-depressant that has two different mechanisms - it is both a selective-serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) along the lines of other common depression treatments such as Prozac and Zoloft, while it also includes a so-called 5-HT1A receptor partial agonist, which is the mechanism in several other anti-depressant treatments on the market including buspirone.