uridine

[ yoor-i-deen, -din ]

noun

, Biochemistry.

1. a ribonucleoside composed of ribose and uracil.

uridine

/ ˈjʊərɪˌdiːn /

noun

1. biochem a nucleoside present in all living cells in a combined form, esp in RNA

Word History and Origins

Origin of uridine¹

C20: from uro- ¹+ -ide + -ine ²

Example Sentences

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania decades ago discovered that if they altered one of mRNA’s bases, replacing uridine with pseudouridine, the modified strand could elude destruction long enough for cells to make the intended protein.

From Science Magazine

“Moderna’s scientists made the groundbreaking discovery that replacing uridine in the mRNA molecule with 1-methylpseudouridine resulted in surprisingly superior protein production—a severalfold increase over chemically-modified mRNAs studied before—with a significantly reduced immune response against the mRNA itself,” the complaint argues.

From Science Magazine

Some researchers have cautioned that self-amplifying vaccines cannot use an mRNA modification that is key to the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines: the replacement of the natural RNA building block uridine with pseudouridine.

From Science Magazine

The team followed a key step in the playbook used by the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Moderna: replacing uridine—one of the four basic building blocks of RNA—with methylpseudouridine, a substitution that reduces the toxicity of mRNA and increases the amount of spike protein cells produce.

From Science Magazine

The compound can shift its configuration, sometimes mimicking the nucleoside cytidine and sometimes mimicking uridine.

From Scientific American