Adenine in unbuffered nanopure water at a concentration of 2 mM is completely deaminated (>99%) to hypoxanthine at room temperature in ca. 10 weeks, with an estimated half-life (t(1/2)) less than 10 days, about six orders of magnitude faster than previously reported. Cytosine is not deaminated under the same condition, even after 3 years. This is in contrast to previous observations that cytosine deaminates 20-40 times faster than adenine free base, in nucleoside, in nucleotide and in single-stranded DNA in buffered neutral aqueous solutions. Crown Copyright (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.