Thymidine

Thymidine is one of the building blocks of nucleic acids.

Structure of thymidine

Thymidine is a thymine nitrogen base bound to a deoxyribose (in DNA). The thymidine can be bound to phosphate groups. In this case we refer to thymidine monophosphate (TMP), thymidine diphosphate (TDP), and thymidine triphosphate (TTP).

Function of thymidine

Thymidine is involved in production ofDNA and is replaced by uridine in RNA.

It can also be found in some transfer RNA in which thymidine has not been incorporated as such in the RNA transcription but is due to post-transcriptional methylation of uracil.