Thymidine

Thymidine (more precisely called deoxythymidine; can also be labelled deoxyribosylthymine, and thymine deoxyriboside) 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.