Purine

A purine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound, consisting of a pyrimidine ring fused to an imidazole ring. Purines, including substituted purines and their tautomers, are the most widely distributed kind of nitrogen-containing heterocycle in nature.

Purines and pyrimidines make up the two groups of nitrogenous bases, including the two groups of nucleotide bases. Two of the four deoxyribonucleotides and two of the four ribonucleotides, the respective building blocks of DNA and RNA, are purines.

Notable purines
The quantity of naturally occurring purines produced on earth is huge. Two of the four bases in nucleic acids, adenine (2) and guanine (3), are purines. In DNA, these bases form hydrogen bonds with their complementary pyrimidines thymine and cytosine, respectively. This is called complementary base pairing. In RNA, the complement of adenine is uracil instead of thymine.

Other notable purines are hypoxanthine (4), xanthine (5), theobromine (6), caffeine (7), uric acid (8) and isoguanine (9).



Functions
Aside from DNA and RNA, purines are biochemically significant components in a number of other important biomolecules, such as ATP, GTP, cyclic AMP, NADH, and coenzyme A. Purine (1) itself, has not been found in nature, but it can be produced by organic synthesis.

They may also function directly as neurotransmitters, acting upon purinergic receptors. Adenosine activates adenosine receptors.

History
The name 'purine' (purum uricum) was coined by the German chemist Emil Fischer in 1884. He synthesized it for the first time in 1899. The starting material for the reaction sequence was uric acid (8), which had been isolated from kidney stones by Scheele in 1776. Uric acid (8) was reacted with PCl5 to give 2,6,8-trichloropurine (10), which was converted with HI and PH4I to give 2,6-diiodopurine (11). The product was reduced to purine (1) using zinc-dust.



Metabolism
Many organisms have metabolic pathways to synthesize and break down purines.

Purines are biologically synthesized as nucleosides (bases attached to ribose).

Laboratory synthesis
In addition to in vivo synthesis of purines in purine metabolism, purine can also be created artificially.

Purine (1) is obtained in good yield when formamide is heated in an open vessel at 170 °C for 28 hours.



This remarkable reaction and others like it have been discussed in the context of the origin of life.

Procedure: Formamide (45 grams) was heated in an open vessel with a condenser for 28 hours in an oil bath at 170-190 °C. After removing excess formamide (32.1 grams) by vacuum distillation, the residue was refluxed with methanol. The methanol solvent was filtered, the solvent removed from the filtrate by vacuum distillation, and almost pure purine obtained; yield 4.93 grams (71% yield from formamide consumed). Crystallization from acetone afforded purine as colorless crystals; melting point 218 °C.

Oro, Orgel and co-workers have shown that four molecules of HCN tetramerize to form diaminomaleodinitrile (12), which can be converted into almost all natural-occurring purines.



The Traube purine synthesis (1900) is a classic reaction (named after Wilhelm Traube) between an amine-substituted pyrimidine and formic acid.