guanine

Etymology

guano + -ine. Guanine was named by the German chemist Julius Bodo Unger in 1846 who isolated it from guano.

noun

  1. (chemistry) A substance first obtained from guano; it is a nucleic base and pairs with cytosine 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

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