Talk:Cytosine

Untitled
Cytosine is defined here as "one of 5 main nucleobases..."

As one of four bases in DNA, the other 3 (Guanine, Adenine and Thymine) are each defined as "one of 4 main nitrogenous bases..." Though it is true that in RNA, Uracil replaces Thymine, it (uracil) is also defined as "one of the 4 main nitrogenous bases..."

I wonder if Cytosine should be changed to also be defined as "one of 4 main nitrogenous bases" to make it consistent with the other bases, though the article for "nitrogenous base" might need to be modified to further clarify the 4 main bases in DNA (guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine) and the additional role uracil plays in RNA.

If this change were to happen, though, "uracil" would be odd base out and the article for that would need to be modified as (stated above) it also states it is one of the 4 main bases.

The other option is to re-define each of the others to "one of 5 main nitrogenous bases" because there technically are 5, but when speaking of DNA, uracil is excluded.


 * Happety 14:46, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It should be 5 nitrogenous bases. And who on earth put cytosine (as opposed to cytidine) triphosphate? People shouldn't modify the page if they don't know what they're doing. Kr5t 02:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

So scientist used cytosine to store information. Cytosine can be used to store information. DNA stores information, Cytosine is in DNA. Is it possible that DNA has been using quantum states of cytosine to store information in addition to the genetic code information that is stored as sequences of base pairs? "People shouldn't modify the page if they don't know what they're doing." What about BEBOLD? --Zerothis (talk) 05:33, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

IUPAC Name
The IUPAC name currently listed appears to be incorrect in that the indicated hydrogen 1H does not precede the ketone locant. Also, and it's a minor issue, but whilst the diones uracil and thymine are pyrimidinediones, cytosine is a pyrimidinone and as such the e is dropped. I am therefore changing the name to 4-aminopyrimidin-2(1H)-one. Nomenclature gurus, your thoughts are valued. Eutactic (talk) 05:06, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Renaming cytosine
I'm not sure who decides these things, but it'd be really useful to rename cytosine as kytosine. You could pronounce it the same, but this way the bases would be A,T,K,G not A,T,C,G. C and G look really similar and I keep mixing them up. 193.60.95.72 (talk) 16:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Great idea! I bet the entirety of the scientific community will from now on use Kytosine instead of Cytosine. 193.83.7.247 (talk) 10:57, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 12:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Missing Hydrogens
I noticed the diagram is missing some Hydrogens. Also, Carbon is not marked with a C. It is the same with just about every other diagram on the wiki. It is really confusing. Could someone add in the missing parts? I don`t know how to upload pictures. 32ieww (talk) 21:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This is an entirely standard skeletal formula representation. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 13:52, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I am not sure whether the diagram you were looking at before is the same as the one now uploaded. However, this diagram is accurate. It is called a skeletal representation, and hydrogens do not have to be explicitly drawn (they are implied from carbons). The carbon atoms are also part of the skeletal backbone, so they are not indicated with a C, but rather with a new angled line which indicates a new single bond. Juk.22 (talk) 18:13, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

History: toning down reports of Oxford and NASA Ames research
I toned down the press-release-like enthusiasm of the former descriptions of the Oxford and NASA-Ames research. In both cases the research, as commonly the case, was part of a long incremental history. What constitutes distinctively quantum information processing is itself somewhat slippery question. On the one hand any classical computer is "quantum" because without quantum mechanics, the atoms comprising it would collapse. On the other hand, an NMR quantum computer is not "really quantum" because it deviates so slightly from equilibrium that it cannot be scaled up to achieve any quantum advantage; hence subsequent demonstrations of quantum computing have mostly used other hardware, e.g. ion traps. Before even toy demonstrations of quantum computing there was quantum cryptography and violations of Bell's inequality, which have been as described as violations to the classical Church-Turing thesis. Similarly the NASA work is a late advance in the long chain begun with the Miller-Urey experiment. Accordingly, I toned down the description to the basic new result, the formation of nucleobases from the non-biological molecule pyrimidine under space-like conditions, leaving out the paper's speculations about PAH's and red giants.CharlesHBennett (talk) 00:02, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Very sensible! Seems to be some Korean IP who added the rather gushing QIP text (which I have only just spotted). Jonathan A Jones (talk) 13:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Meteorites
The sudden mention of meteorites in the article presently (2017) is weird. It may be better to create a separate article within wikipedia, to talk about the evolution of RNA/DNA, and to mention the situation with meteorites in that article. 2A02:8388:1602:A780:BE5F:F4FF:FECD:7CB2 (talk) 16:46, 4 July 2017 (UTC)