Thymidine (TM)

Thymidine is a chemical compound, more precisely a pyrimidine deoxynucleoside. Deoxythymidine is the DNA nucleoside T, which pairs with deoxyadenosine (A) in double-stranded DNA. In cell biology it is used to synchronize the cells in S phase. Before the boom in thymidine use caused by the need for thymidine for the production of the antiretroviral drug azidothymidine (AZT), much of the world's thymidine production came from herring sperm. Thymidine occurs almost exclusively in DNA but also occurs in the T-loop of tRNA. Deoxythymidine can be phosphorylated with one, two or three phosphoric acid groups, creating respectively dTMP, dTDP or dTTP (deoxythymidine mono- di- or triphosphate). Deoxythymidine is non-toxic and as part of one of the four nucleotides in DNA it is a naturally occurring compound that exists in all living organisms and DNA viruses.