guanine

English

Ball-and-stick model of a guanine molecule. Key: black = carbon, blue = nitrogen, red = oxygen, white = hydrogen.

Alternative forms

• guanin (dated)

Etymology

From guano +‎ -ine. Guanine was named by the German chemist Julius Bodo Unger in 1846 who isolated it from guano.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡwɑː.niːn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑːniːn

Noun

guanine (plural guanines)

1. (chemistry) A substance first obtained from guano; it is a nucleic base and pairs with cytosine in DNA and RNA (by means of three hydrogen bonds).

   Hypernyms: nucleobase, purine

   Coordinate terms: adenine, cytosine, thymine, uracil

   • 1997, Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, Vintage (1998), page 164:

     Then he found them, the substances that made up the four-letter alphabet in whose language all life is written — adenine and cytosine, guanine and thymine.

Derived terms

• alkylguanine
• azaguanine
• benzylguanine
• deoxyguanine
• methylguanine
• oligoguanine
• oxoguanine
• pentaguanine
• polyguanine
• thioguanine

Related terms

• guanosine
• guanylate
• guanylic acid

Translations

substance obtained from guano

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 鳥嘌呤 / 鸟嘌呤 (zh) (niǎopiàolìng, niǎopiāolìng)

• Czech: guanin m
• Esperanto: guanino
• Finnish: guaniini (fi)
• French: guanine (fr) f
• German: Guanin (de) n
• Hungarian: guanin (hu)
• Icelandic: gúanín n
• Italian: guanina (it) f
• Japanese: グアニン (ja) (guanin)
• Kazakh: гуанин (guanin)
• Kyrgyz: гуанин (guanin)
• Polish: guanina (pl) f
• Russian: гуани́н (ru) m (guanín)
• Spanish: guanina f
• Turkish: guanin (tr)

See also

• inosine (a nucleobase susbstitute for guanine)

Further reading

• David Barthelmy (1997–2025) “Guanine”, in Webmineral Mineralogy Database.
• “guanine”, in Mindat.org‎^[1], Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, 2000–2025.

Anagrams

• Guinean, anguine

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

guanine f (plural guanines)

1. guanine

Further reading

• “guanine”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.