Definition of "ribonuclease" []

• Any of various enzymes that break down RNA. Also called RNase. (noun)

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 joined a project on the protein ribonuclease, but shortly afterwards met Rosalind Franklin, who had moved to Birkbeck earlier and had begun working on tobacco mosaic virus."
• "We not only wanted to know what the amino acid sequence of an enzyme such as ribonuclease was, but we tried to find out as much as we could about what made it an enzyme and after we had taken that particular enzyme about as far as we thought we could profitably go, we turned to a number of others which have been listed in the Nobel Lecture."
• "This enzyme, ribonuclease P (RNase P), was readily identifiable."