4-Thiouracil

4-Thiouracil is a site-specific, photoactivatable probe used to detect RNA structures and nucleic acid-nucleic acid contacts. It absorbs ultraviolet light >300 nm and, in the presence of oxygen, acts as an energy donor to produce singlet oxygen by triplet-triplet energy transfer. The highly reactive oxygen species then reacts readily with 4-thiouracil, leading to the production of uracil and uracil-6-sulfonate, which is fluorescent at a wavelength of ~390 nm. 4-Thiouracil is used as a T. gondii uracil phosphoribosyltransferase substrate to produce 4-thiouridine monophosphate, which can ultimately be incorporated into RNA.

yellow powder

4-Thiouracil is suitable reagent employed in Schneider′s media for the embryos during RNA extraction. It may be employed as reagent for the Northwestern blotting technique.

4-Thiouracil is a derivative of Uracil (U801000), which is a nitrogenous base in RNA nucleic acid. 4-Thiouracil is used for tagging in cell type-specific RNA isolation from intact complex tissues.

Synthesis, p. 256, 1987 DOI: 10.1055/s-1987-27906

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[2] XIAORAN ZOU. Photophysical and Photochemical Properties of 4-Thiouracil: Time-Resolved IR Spectroscopy and DFT Studies[J]. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2014, 118 22: 5864-5872. DOI: 10.1021/jp501658a
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