Definition of "nucleophile" [nucleophile]

• A chemical compound or group that is attracted to nuclei and tends to donate or share electrons. (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.

• "These are exemplified below with isopropyl chloride which, in the presence of the nucleophile Nu -, reacts to give a nucleophilic substitution product and/or an elimination product:"
• "The pseuoduridine synthases (Y synthases) are responsible for this reaction, and they fall into five families that share very limited sequence similarity but have the same overall fold and active site architecture, including an essential Asp that likely serves as both a nucleophile and a general base during the reaction."
• "Drosophila enzyme are observed with a nucleophile-Ala variant with the − 1 subsite sugar"