thymine

English

Ball-and-stick model of a thymine molecule. Key: black = carbon, blue = nitrogen, red = oxygen, white = hydrogen.

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.

   Coordinate terms: adenine, cytosine, guanine

   • 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.

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)

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

thymine f (plural thymines)

1. thymine

Further reading

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