Chemical synthesis of novel taurine-containing uridine derivatives.

Recently, novel taurine-containing uridine derivatives were discovered in mammalian mitochondrial tRNAs, and these modified ribonucleosides existed at the first position of the anti-codon. This paper describes the chemical synthesis of these novel uridine derivatives, 5-taurinomethyluridine (tau m5U) and 5-taurinomethyl-2-thiouridine (tau m5s2U). These taurine-containing uridine derivatives were synthesized in the good yields by the reaction of the corresponding 5-hydroxymethyluridine derivatives with taurine under basic conditions.