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Cytosine
 
 
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Cytosine is one of the five main bases found in DNA
DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetics instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses....
 and RNA
RNA

Ribonucleic acid is a type of molecule that consists of a long chain of nucleotide units. Each nucleotide consists of a nucleobase, a ribose sugar, and a phosphate....
. It is a pyrimidine
Pyrimidine

Pyrimidine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound similar to benzene and pyridine, containing two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 of the six-member ring....
 derivative, with a heterocyclic aromatic ring and two substituents attached (an amine
Amine

Amines are organic compounds and functional groups that contain a base nitrogen atom with a lone pair. Amines are derivative s of ammonia, wherein one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by organic substituents such as alkyl and aryl groups....
 group at position 4 and a keto
Ketone

In organic chemistry, a ketone is a type of organic compound which contains a carbonyl group bonded to two other carbon atoms in the form:Neither of the substituents R1 and R2 may be equal to hydrogen ....
 group at position 2). The nucleoside
Nucleoside

Nucleosides are glycosylamines consisting of a nucleobase bound to a ribose or deoxyribose sugar. Examples of these include cytidine, uridine, adenosine, guanosine, thymidine and inosine....
 of cytosine is cytidine
Cytidine

Cytidine is a nucleoside molecule that is formed when cytosine is attached to a ribose ring via a ?-N1-glycosidic bond. Cytidine is a component of RNA....
. In Watson-Crick base pair
Base pair

In molecular biology, two nucleotides on opposite complementarity DNA or RNA strands that are connected via hydrogen bonds are called a base pair ....
ing, it forms three hydrogen bonds with guanine
Guanine

Guanine is one of the five main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the others being adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. In DNA, guanine is paired with cytosine....
.

sine was discovered by Albrecht Kossel
Albrecht Kossel

Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel was a Germany medical doctor....
 in 1894 when it was hydrolysed from calf thymus
Thymus

In human anatomy, the thymus is an organ located in the upper anterior portion of the Thoracic cavity just behind the sternum. The main function of the thymus is to provide an area for T lymphocyte maturation....
 tissues.






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Cytosine is one of the five main bases found in DNA
DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetics instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses....
 and RNA
RNA

Ribonucleic acid is a type of molecule that consists of a long chain of nucleotide units. Each nucleotide consists of a nucleobase, a ribose sugar, and a phosphate....
. It is a pyrimidine
Pyrimidine

Pyrimidine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound similar to benzene and pyridine, containing two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 of the six-member ring....
 derivative, with a heterocyclic aromatic ring and two substituents attached (an amine
Amine

Amines are organic compounds and functional groups that contain a base nitrogen atom with a lone pair. Amines are derivative s of ammonia, wherein one or more hydrogen atoms are replaced by organic substituents such as alkyl and aryl groups....
 group at position 4 and a keto
Ketone

In organic chemistry, a ketone is a type of organic compound which contains a carbonyl group bonded to two other carbon atoms in the form:Neither of the substituents R1 and R2 may be equal to hydrogen ....
 group at position 2). The nucleoside
Nucleoside

Nucleosides are glycosylamines consisting of a nucleobase bound to a ribose or deoxyribose sugar. Examples of these include cytidine, uridine, adenosine, guanosine, thymidine and inosine....
 of cytosine is cytidine
Cytidine

Cytidine is a nucleoside molecule that is formed when cytosine is attached to a ribose ring via a ?-N1-glycosidic bond. Cytidine is a component of RNA....
. In Watson-Crick base pair
Base pair

In molecular biology, two nucleotides on opposite complementarity DNA or RNA strands that are connected via hydrogen bonds are called a base pair ....
ing, it forms three hydrogen bonds with guanine
Guanine

Guanine is one of the five main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the others being adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. In DNA, guanine is paired with cytosine....
.

History

Cytosine was discovered by Albrecht Kossel
Albrecht Kossel

Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel was a Germany medical doctor....
 in 1894 when it was hydrolysed from calf thymus
Thymus

In human anatomy, the thymus is an organ located in the upper anterior portion of the Thoracic cavity just behind the sternum. The main function of the thymus is to provide an area for T lymphocyte maturation....
 tissues. A structure was proposed in 1903, and was synthesized (and thus confirmed) in the laboratory in the same year.

Cytosine recently found use in quantum computation. The first time any quantum
Quantum

In physics, a quantum is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter and of photons and other bosons....
 mechanical properties were harnessed to process information
Information

Information as a Conveyed concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control system, data, form, instruction, knowledge, Meaning , stimulation, pattern, perception, and knowledge representation....
 took place on August 1st in 1998 when researchers at Oxford implemented David Deutsch's
David Deutsch

David Elieser Deutsch Fellow of the Royal Society#Fellowship is a physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory....
 algorithm
Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm

The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm is a Quantum computer, proposed by David Deutsch and Richard Jozsa in 1992 with improvements by R. Cleve, A. Ekert, C....
 on a two qubit
Qubit

A quantum bit or qubit is a unit of quantum information. That information is described by a Quantum state in a Two-state quantum system, which is formally equivalent to a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers....
 NMRQC (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance

Nuclear magnetic resonance is the name given to a physical resonance phenomenon involving the observation of specific quantum mechanics magnetism properties of an atomic atomic nucleus in the presence of an applied, external magnetic field....
 Quantum Computer) based on the cytosine molecule
Molecule

In chemistry, a molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable, electric charge neutral group of at least two atoms in a definite arrangement held together by very strong chemical bonds....
.

Chemical reactions

Cytosine can be found as part of DNA, RNA, or as a part of a nucleotide
Nucleotide

Nucleotides are molecules that comprise the structural units of RNA and DNA. Additionally, nucleotides play central roles in metabolism. In that capacity, they serve as sources of chemical energy , participate in cell signaling , and are incorporated into important cofactors of enzymatic reactions ....
. As cytidine triphosphate
Cytidine triphosphate

Cytidine triphosphate is a pyrimidine nucleotide.CTP is a Substrate in the synthesis of RNA.CTP is a high-energy molecule equal to adenosine triphosphate, but its role in the organism is more specific than that of ATP....
 (CTP), it can act as a co-factor to enzymes, and can transfer a phosphate to convert adenosine diphosphate
Adenosine diphosphate

Adenosine diphosphate, abbreviated ADP, is a nucleotide. It is an ester of pyrophosphoric acid with the nucleoside adenosine. ADP consists of the pyrophosphate Functional group, the pentose sugar ribose, and the nucleobase adenine....
 (ADP) to adenosine triphosphate
Adenosine triphosphate

This article is about the chemical used by cells as an energy carrier. For other uses, see ATP .Adenosine-5'-triphosphate is a multifunctional nucleotide, and plays an important role in cell biology as a coenzyme that is the "molecule unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer....
 (ATP).

In DNA and RNA, cytosine is paired with guanine
Guanine

Guanine is one of the five main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the others being adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. In DNA, guanine is paired with cytosine....
. However, it is inherently unstable, and can change into uracil
Uracil

Uracil is a common and naturally occurring pyrimidine derivative. Originally discovered in 1900, it was isolated by hydrolysis of yeast nuclein that was found in bovine thymus and spleen, herring, sperm, and wheat germ....
 (spontaneous deamination
Deamination

Deamination is the removal of an amine group from a molecule.In the human body, deamination takes place in the liver. Deamination is the process by which amino acids are broken down when too much protein has been taken in....
). This can lead to a point mutation
Point mutation

A point mutation, or single base substitution, is a type of mutation that causes the replacement of a single base nucleotide with another nucleotide of the genetic material, DNA or RNA....
 if not repaired by the DNA repair
DNA repair

DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolism activities and environmental factors such as UV light and Radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell pe...
 enzymes such as uracil glycosylase, which cleaves a uracil in DNA.

Cytosine can also be methylated into 5-methylcytosine
5-Methylcytosine

5-Methylcytosine is a methylation form of cytosine in which a methyl group is attached to carbon 5, altering its structure without altering its base-pairing properties....
 by an enzyme called DNA methyltransferase
DNA methyltransferase

In biochemistry, the DNA methyltransferase family of enzymescatalysis the transfer of a methyl group to DNA. DNA methylation serves a wide variety of biological functions....
.

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