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​Uracil Play Audio

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Uracil (U) is one of four chemical bases that are part of RNA. The other three bases are adenine (A), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). In DNA, the base thymine (T) is used in place of uracil.

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Uracil is a nucleotide, much like adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine, which are the building blocks of DNA, except uracil replaces thymine in RNA. So uracil is the nucleotide that is found almost exclusively in RNA.

Lawrence C. Brody, Ph.D.

Related Terms

Adenine Cytosine Guanine Thymine Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Base Pair Genetic Code Nucleotide

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