5-methyluridine

5-Methyluridine

5-Methyluridine

One of the five major nucleosides in nucleic acids


The chemical compound 5-methyluridine (symbol m5U or m5U), also called ribothymidine (rT)[footnote 1], is a pyrimidine nucleoside. It is the ribonucleoside counterpart to the deoxyribonucleoside thymidine, which lacks a hydroxyl group at the 2' position. 5-Methyluridine contains a thymine base joined to a ribose pentose sugar.[4] It is a white solid.

Quick Facts Names, Identifiers ...

m5U is one of the most common modifications made to cellular RNA. It almost universally occurs in position 54 (part of the T arm) of eukaryotic and bacterial tRNA, serving to stabilize the molecule. The same "T-loop" motif occurs in many other forms of noncoding RNA such as tmRNA and rRNA. Loss of the tRNA modification does not usually produce a different, less fit, phenotype.[5]

See also

Footnotes

  1. The term ribothymidine is especially used to describe its unusual occurrence in RNA.[3]

References

  1. "5-Methyluridine". ChemSpider. Retrieved December 6, 2018.
  2. William M. Haynes (2016). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (97th ed.). Boca Raton: CRC Press. p. 3-400. ISBN 978-1-4987-5429-3.
  3. Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry (6th ed.). W. H. Freeman and Company. 2013. p. 282. ISBN 9781429234146.

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