{"id":985,"date":"2012-06-15T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idtdna.com\/page\/deoxyinosine-don-t-call-me-a-universal-base"},"modified":"2025-08-22T16:11:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:11:28","slug":"deoxyinosine-don-t-call-me-a-universal-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idtdna.com\/page\/support-and-education\/decoded-plus\/deoxyinosine-don-t-call-me-a-universal-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Deoxyinosine: Don\u2019t call me a universal base!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deoxyinosine, a naturally occurring nucleoside, was considered the&nbsp;first &ldquo;universal&rdquo; base&mdash;meaning that it could base pair with&nbsp;the other natural DNA bases: A, C, G, and T. However, this terminology&nbsp;encountered some criticism, notably from Dr. Michael&nbsp;Smith, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for&nbsp;developing <a href=\"\/pages\/education\/decoded\/article\/methods-for-site-directed-mutagenesis\">site-directed mutagenesis<\/a>, who mentioned deoxyinosine in his Nobel lecture. \"I have&nbsp;always been puzzled by the widespread acceptance of the&nbsp;idea that deoxyinosine is precocious in base pairing because inosine behaves in a precocious manner in t-RNA duplex&nbsp;interactions. Studies on deoxyinosine, in fact, indicate that it&nbsp;functions as a specific analog of deoxyguanosine, although&nbsp;it does not self-aggregate as does deoxyguanosine.&rdquo; Subsequent&nbsp;studies have shown that Dr. Smith was correct: deoxyinosine binds preferably to deoxycytidine (dC) [<a href=\"#references\">1<\/a>]. So go ahead and use it in&nbsp;experiments, just don&rsquo;t call it universal!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deoxyinosine, a naturally occurring nucleoside, was considered the&nbsp;first &ldquo;universal&rdquo; base&mdash;meaning that it could base pair with&nbsp;the other natural DNA bases: A, C, G, and T. However, this terminology&nbsp;encountered some criticism, notably from Dr. Michael&nbsp;Smith, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for&nbsp;developing site-directed mutagenesis, who mentioned deoxyinosine in his Nobel lecture. \"I have&nbsp;always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ct_builder_shortcodes":"","ct_template_type":"","ct_parent_template":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>DeoxyInosine: Don&#039;t call me a universal base! | IDT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read why deoxyinosine is not a universal base according to Nobel Laureate, Michael Smith.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.idtdna.com\/page\/support-and-education\/decoded-plus\/deoxyinosine-don-t-call-me-a-universal-base\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DeoxyInosine: Don&#039;t call me a universal base! 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