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 (τm5U) and 5-taurinomethyl-2-thiouridine (τm5s2U). These taurine-containing uridine derivatives were synthesized in the good yields by the reaction of the corresponding S-hydroxymethyluridine derivatives with taurine under basic conditions
