If a 4 nucleotides sequence code for an amino acid instead of 3, then theoretically how many unique amino acids could be coded by such a system?
Ans. d. 256 (Ref: Harper 28/e p353)If there would have been two nucleotides in each codon, the chance of their varied combination will be 42, i.e. 16, and three nucleotide in each codon means there will occur 43, i.e. 64 codons are possible. According to the above calculation, if there occurs 4 nucleotides in a codon, the chance of their varied combination will be 44, i.e. 256.Number of Nucleotides in CodonNumber of Coded Amino Acids242= 16343= 64444= 256
16
64
128
256
Structure of DNA