Conjugation

In biology, conjugation is sexual reproduction involving interchange of DNA between cells, rather than their fusion. Various forms of conjugation exist in different groups, such as bacteria (see bacterial conjugation) and ciliates.

In mathematics, the term is used in two senses:

• complex conjugation is the operation which multiplies the imaginary part of a complex number by -1; see complex conjugate
• if a is an element of a group, then the map f(x) = axa^-1 is called conjugation by a. See inner automorphism, conjugacy class and conjugate closure

See also: conjugate