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nucleotide

American  
[noo-klee-uh-tahyd, nyoo-] / ˈnu kli əˌtaɪd, ˈnyu- /

noun

Biochemistry.

  1. any of a group of molecules that, when linked together, form the building blocks of DNA or RNA: composed of a phosphate group, the bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, and a pentose sugar, in RNA the thymine base being replaced by uracil.

nucleotide British  
/ ˈnjuːklɪəˌtaɪd /

noun

  1. biochem a compound consisting of a nucleoside linked to phosphoric acid. Nucleic acids are made up of long chains (polynucleotides) of such compounds

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
nucleotide Scientific  
/ no̅o̅′klē-ə-tīd′ /

  1. Any of a group of organic compounds composed of a nucleoside linked to a phosphate group. Nucleotides are the basic building blocks of nucleic acids.

Other Word Forms

Etymology

Origin of nucleotide

First recorded in 1905–10; alteration of nucleoside

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Genetics - Middle School

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Biochemistry

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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Three identical databases, run by GenBank, the European Nucleotide Archive, and the DNA Data Bank of Japan, deliver data to 750 downstream sequence databases that are then further connected to another 1000 more specialized databases.

From Science Magazine • Apr. 5, 2022

We basically have one global, open library of sequence data—the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration.

From Science Magazine • Apr. 5, 2022

The RNA-seq reads were deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive as study PRJEB23317.

From Nature • Nov. 14, 2017

They match this eDNA to known DNA sequences from thousands of species held in databases such as GenBank and Nucleotide.

From Scientific American • Feb. 3, 2015

Nucleotide excision repair is particularly important in correcting thymine dimers, which are primarily caused by ultraviolet light.

From Textbooks • Apr. 25, 2013

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.