Uracil

//ˈjʊərəsɪl// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One of the bases of RNA, pairing with adenine. countable, uncountable

    "We did have some success with uracil when we would preincorporate the uracil into a mutant of E. coli that had a uracil requirement and then feed this cellular content from E. coli."

  2. 2
    a base containing nitrogen that is found in RNA (but not in DNA) and derived from pyrimidine; pairs with adenine wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
uu

Example

More examples

"We did have some success with uracil when we would preincorporate the uracil into a mutant of E. coli that had a uracil requirement and then feed this cellular content from E. coli."

Etymology

From uro- + ac(etic) + -ile. Coined in 1885 by the German chemist Robert Behrend, who was attempting to synthesize derivatives of uric acid.

Related phrases

uracil mustard

More for "uracil"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.