Definition of "ligate" [li•gate]

• To tie or bind with a ligature. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I know there are professors in this country who "ligate" arteries."
• "At that time, it had only been demonstrated that RNA could cleave or ligate phosphodiester bonds."
• "Ensuing discoveries of other natural catalytic RNAs that could cleave and ligate phosphodiester bonds, and the very recent observation that the region surrounding the peptidyl transferase center of a bacterial"