cytosine

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.

noun

  1. (biochemistry) A heterocyclic base, 4-aminopyrimidin-2(1H)-one, which pairs with guanine in DNA and RNA (by means of three hydrogen bonds).
    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. 1997, Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, Vintage (1998), page 164

Attribution / Disclaimer All definitions come directly from Wiktionary using the Wiktextract library. We do not edit or curate the definitions for any words, if you feel the definition listed is incorrect or offensive please suggest modifications directly to the source (wiktionary/cytosine), any changes made to the source will update on this page periodically.