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Definition of "uracil" [uracil]

  • A pyrimidine base, C4H4N2O2, that is an essential constituent of RNA. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "uracil" in a sentence
  • "Adenine and guanine are fused five - and six-membered purines, while cytosine and thymine are six-membered rings called uracil (U), replaces thymine in RNA."
  • "For 40 years, efforts to understand the prebiotic synthesis of the ribonucleotide building blocks of RNA have been based on the assumption that they must have assembled from their three molecular components: a nucleobase (which can be adenine, guanine, cytosine or uracil), a ribose sugar and phosphate."
  • "Of the many difficulties encountered by those in the field, the most frustrating has been the failure to find any way of properly joining the pyrimidine nucleobases — cytosine and uracil — to ribose (Fig. 1a)."