thymine

thymine

English

Etymology

From thymus +‎ -ine.Thymine was first isolated in 1893 by Albrecht Kossel and Albert Neumann from calves' thymus glands, hence its name.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈθaɪmɪn/

Noun

thymine (countable and uncountable, plural thymines)

1. (organic chemistry, genetics) A heterocyclic base, 5-methylpyrimidine-2,4(1H,3H)-dione; it pairs with adenine in DNA.
   • 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.

   Coordinate terms: adenine, cytosine, guanine

Related terms

• thymidine
• thymidylate
• thymidylic acid

 

Translations

organic chemistry, genetics: heterocyclic base, 5-methylpyrimidine-2,4(1H,3H)-dione

Chinese: Mandarin: 胸腺嘧啶 (zh) (xiōngxiànmìdìng) Czech: thymin m Esperanto: timino Finnish: tymiini (fi) French: thymine (fr) f German: Thymin (de) n Hungarian: timin Icelandic: týmín n Italian: timina (it) f Japanese: チミン (ja) (chimin) Kazakh: тимин (timin) Kyrgyz: тимин (timin) Polish: tymina f Portuguese: timina f Russian: тими́н (ru) m (timín) Turkish: timin (tr)

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French

Noun

thymine f (plural thymines)

1. thymine

Further reading

• “thymine”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.