Definition of "exotoxin" []

• A poisonous substance secreted by a microorganism and released into the medium in which it grows. (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.

• "If you were real, you'd never know it was going to hit ... or if that last sausage you'd gobbled had the staphylococcal exotoxin in it."
• "With that lead, Moeller's team established that the Pfiesteria cell can produce a copper-containing exotoxin -- a toxin produced external to the cell itself -- possibly as a mechanism to protect itself from copper in the environment."
• "Alarmingly, since the 1980s S. pyogenes has been identified to be globally responsible for a class of emerging, life threatening, invasive infections including the "flesh-eating" disease, necrotizing fasciitis, septicemia, and the excretion of the pyrogenic exotoxin-associated toxic shock syndrome"