Names and Abbreviations of Nucleic Acid Bases, Nucleosides, and Nucleotides ¹

Base Formula	Base X=H	Nucleoside X=ribosea	Nucleotideb X=ribose phosphatea
	Adenine Ade A	Adenosine Ado A	Adenylic acid Adenosine monophosphate AMP
	Guanine Gua G	Guanosine Guo G	Guanylic acid Guanosine monophosphate GMP
	Cytosine Cyt C	Cytidine Cyd C	Cytidylic acid Cytosine monophosphate CMP
	Uracil Ura U	Uridine Urd U	Uridylic acid Urdine monophosphate UMP
	Thymine Thy T	Deoxythymidine dThd dT	Deoxythymidylic acid Deoxythymidine monophosphate dTMP

¹ From Voet, D. and Voet, J.G., Biochemistry, p. 742, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (1990)

^a The presence of a 2'-deoxyribose unit in place of a ribose, as occurs in DNA, is implied by the prefixes "deoxy" or "d". For example, the deoxynucleoside of adenine is deoxyadenosine of dA. However, for thymine-containing residues, which rarely occur in RNA, the prefix is redundant and may be dropped. The presence of a ribose unit may be explicitly implied by the prefixes "ribo" or "r". Thus the ribonucleotide of thymine is ribothymidine or rT.

^b The position of the phosphate group in a nucleotide may be explicitly specified as in, for example, 3'-AMP and 5'-GMP.