How to Use cytosine in a Sentence

cytosine

noun
  • The bases pair up, with adenine bonding to thymine and cytosine to guanine.
    — Bijal P Trivedi, Discover Magazine, 30 July 2013
  • The most common way of doing this is to link a single carbon atom (a methyl group) to the base cytosine.
    — ArsTechnica, 23 June 2025
  • Adenine always pairs with thymine, and guanine always pairs with cytosine.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 2 Oct. 2025
  • To form the i-motif, the double helix untwists and then one of the strands bunches up with a bunch of cytosine molecules.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Four chemical bases — adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine — bond with hydrogen to make base pairings.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2022
  • Called a tautomer, the drug assumes two forms, one which closely resembles uracil (U) and the other cytosine (C).
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 8 Oct. 2021
  • The low prevalence of uracil sequences is connotated by an enrichment for guanine and cytosine sequences.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 28 Oct. 2021
  • All genes consists of base pairs made of adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C).
    — Manasee Wagh, Popular Mechanics, 1 Apr. 2022
  • Her team reported last year in Cell that many mRNA cytosine bases are acetylated.
    — Ken Garber, Science | AAAS, 1 July 2019
  • Stuck to every sugar is a base—the As (adenine), Gs (guanine), Cs (cytosine), and Ts (thymine).
    — Sarah Scoles, Scientific American, 13 Jan. 2023
  • Each gene consists of some number of base pairs made of adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C).
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 3 June 2021
  • In a process called hydrolytic deamination, for example, the base cytosine spontaneously loses its amino group and becomes uracil.
    — Quanta Magazine, 29 May 2019
  • Ryugu contains roughly comparable amounts of the nucleobases, adenine and guanine (known as purines), to cytosine, thymine, and uracil (pyrimidines).
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 17 Mar. 2026
  • All that means is that there’s a genetic variation at a certain location on your genome—for example, a cytosine base instead of thymine at position 42.
    — Caitlin Harrington, Wired, 2 Oct. 2020
  • The bases are often referred to as A, C, G and T, the initials of their full chemical names, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.
    — The Economist, 26 Oct. 2017
  • In all living things, DNA is naturally composed of four compounds, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 6 July 2011
  • Those rungs are made up of pairs of four different chemical building blocks, called bases — adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine (A,T,C and G).
    — F.d. Flam, Mercury News, 26 Nov. 2025
  • These symbols represent the four basic chemical letters, or bases, the body uses to form DNA--guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 30 Dec. 2010
  • The molecules are called bases and are represented by the letters A (adenine), T (thymine), G (guanine), and C (cytosine).
    — IEEE Spectrum, 22 Feb. 2016
  • The molecule is made up of the chemical bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—shortened to A, C, G, and T—which pair off to form a double helix.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 4 Dec. 2023
  • The vast chains of DNA in each cell are made of just four molecules — adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine — arranged in enormously varied configurations.
    — Gina Kolata, The Seattle Times, 12 July 2017
  • Rather than inducing random changes in the virus’ RNA genome, the drug is more likely to cause specific nucleic acid substitutions, with guanine switching to adenine and cytosine to uracil.
    — Byrobert F. Service, science.org, 1 Feb. 2023
  • This four-tone greeting is not a specific communication per-se, but the nucleotides of guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine, which represent the building blocks of RNA.
    — Jeff Spry, Space.com, 14 Nov. 2025
  • For the more recent experiments, cooler water and more sensitive study methods were used to extract and identify the nucleobases cytosine and thymine, while more sensitive study methods found the molecules, researchers say.
    — Mike Snider, USA TODAY, 28 Apr. 2022
  • Adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine are the four bases of the genetic code that make up the rungs of the double helix structure of DNA by forming specific pairs (adenine pairs with thymine, guanine with cytosine).
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Tobacco Doctors already knew that tobacco could cause cancer, but Alexandrov’s work showed how—by preferentially mutating certain bases (such as cytosine) into others (adenine).
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 19 Mar. 2018
  • This team, led by JAXA biogeochemist Toshiki Koga, analysed two Ryugu samples returned by Hayabusa 2, finding adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Scientists have discovered that a sample of the Ryugu asteroid collected by Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft contains the nucleobases adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil, the building blocks of DNA and RNA upon which all life is based.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 17 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cytosine.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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