Guanine

A Guanine molecule.

Guanine is one of the five main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA.

The others are adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. With the formula C₅H₅N₅O, guanine is a derivative of purine.

Basic principles

Guanine, along with adenine and cytosine, is present in both DNA and RNA, whereas thymine is usually seen only in DNA and uracil only in RNA.

References

• Miyakawa, S., Murasawa, K., Kobayashi, K., Sawaoka, AB. "Abiotic synthesis of guanine with high-temperature plasma." Orig Life Evol Biosph. 30(6): 557-66, Dec. 2000.
• Horton, H.R., Moran, L.A., Ochs, R.S., Rawn, J.D., Scrimgeour, K.G. "Principles of Biochemistry." Prentice Hall (New Jersey). 3rd Edition, 2002.
• Lister, J.H. "Part II Purines." The Chemistry of Heterocyclic Compounds. Wiley-Interscience (New York). 1971.

Other websites

• Computational Chemistry Wiki Archived 2007-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
• Good Guanine reference