cytosine

English

Etymology

After German Cytosin, equivalent to Ancient Greek κύτος (kútos) + -ine. Cytosine was discovered and named by the German biochemists Albrecht Kossel and Albert Neumann in 1894 when it was hydrolyzed from calf thymus tissues.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪtəsiːn/

Noun

cytosine (plural cytosines)

(biochemistry) A heterocyclic base, 4-aminopyrimidin-2(1H)-one, which pairs with guanine in DNA and RNA (by means of three hydrogen bonds).
- 1997, Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, Vintage (1998), page 164:
  Then he found them, the substances that made up the four-letter alphabet in whose language all life is written — adenine and cytosine, guanine and thymine.
Hypernyms: nucleobase, pyrimidine
Coordinate terms: adenine, guanine, thymine, uracil

Derived terms

cytosine arabinoside
deoxycytosine

Related terms

cytidine
cytidylate
cytidylic acid

Translations

heterocyclic base, 4-aminopyrimidin-2(1H)-one, which pairs with guanine in DNA and RNA

Catalan: citosina f
Chinese:
Mandarin: 胞嘧啶 (zh) (bāomìdìng)
Czech: cytosin m
Esperanto: citozino
Finnish: sytosiini (fi)
French: cytosine (fr) f
Galician: citosina f
German: Cytosin (de) n
Hungarian: citozin
Icelandic: sýtósín n, sýtosín n
Irish: cíotóisín m
Italian: citosina (it) f
Japanese: シトシン (ja) (shitoshin)
Polish: cytozyna f
Portuguese: citosina f
Russian: цитози́н (ru) m (citozín)
Serbo-Croatian: citòzīn (sh) m
Spanish: citosina f
Turkish: sitozin (tr)