Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A pyrimidine base, C4H4N2O2, that is an essential constituent of RNA.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A colorless compound, prepared by the action of hydrochloric acid on methylmercapto-uracil. It crystallizes in spherical masses of minute needles and melts at 338° C.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun organic chemistry One of the bases of
RNA . It pairs withadenine and is symbolised byU .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a base containing nitrogen that is found in RNA (but not in DNA) and derived from pyrimidine; pairs with adenine
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word uracil.
Examples
-
Adenine and guanine are fused five - and six-membered purines, while cytosine and thymine are six-membered rings called uracil (U), replaces thymine in RNA.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
-
Adenine and guanine are fused five - and six-membered purines, while cytosine and thymine are six-membered rings called uracil (U), replaces thymine in RNA.
Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009
-
Of the many difficulties encountered by those in the field, the most frustrating has been the failure to find any way of properly joining the pyrimidine nucleobases — cytosine and uracil — to ribose (Fig. 1a).
-
For 40 years, efforts to understand the prebiotic synthesis of the ribonucleotide building blocks of RNA have been based on the assumption that they must have assembled from their three molecular components: a nucleobase (which can be adenine, guanine, cytosine or uracil), a ribose sugar and phosphate.
-
The interface properties of the protein-RNA complexes reveal the diverse nature of the binding sites. van der Waals contacts played a more prevalent role than hydrogen bond contacts, and preferential binding to guanine and uracil was observed.
-
For example, suppose one wishes to explain why DNA has thymine and why messenger RNA, transfer RNA, and ribosomal RNA have uracil.
Molecular Biology Darden, Lindley 2009
-
Uracil is cheaper to synthesize than thymine, because thymine has a methyl group that uracil lacks.
Molecular Biology Darden, Lindley 2009
-
A number of different sensors have been developed, based on triggers that include direct DNA damage, the inactivation of bacterial spores and bacteriophages, photochemical reactions involving vitamin D photosynthesis, and the accumulation of polycrystalline uracil.
Long-term change and variability in surface UV irradiance in the Arctic 2009
-
Hence, it is more efficient to quickly synthesize uracil and quickly synthesize labile RNAs.
Molecular Biology Darden, Lindley 2009
-
Carbon isotope ratios for uracil and xanthine of δ13C = + 44.5‰ and + 37.7‰, respectively, indicate a non-terrestrial origin for these compounds.
How Life Came to Earth Zoe Brain 2008
chained_bear commented on the word uracil
"The genetic code uses a language of four letters, each representing the chemicals adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine (in some cases uracil substitutes for thymine)."
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 99
February 11, 2009