This professor likes to bully me, I don\'t know if she\'ll give me any help if I

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This professor likes to bully me, I don't know if she'll give me any help if I go to her office hours..

Assume that you work in a laboratory and you are helping to elucidate the genetic code. You have demonstrated experimentally that the triplets UUU and GGG code for phenylalanine and glycine, respectively. A coworker prepares a synthetic, random RNA copolymer using U and G, that in turn is supplied to a cell-free in vitro polypeptide-synthesizing system. An analysis is performed on the polypeptide molecules resulting from the translation of this RNA. Weeks later you are reviewing the procedure and outcome of this experiment in your colleague's data book, and you notice that no record was made of the relative amounts of U and G incorporated into the synthetic RNA. in fact, the only information recorded is that phenylalanine made up 29.6% of the amino acids incorporated into the polypeptide.

WHAT codons could occur in the synthetic RNA?

How many of these codons code for phenylalanine?

What were the relative concentrations in which U and G were supplied to the RNA synthesizing system?

Explanation / Answer

Only two nucleotides

So, the possible combinations are 23=8

The possible codons that occur in this synthetic RNA is

UGG; UUG, GUU, GGU, GUG, UGU, UUU, GGG

Only one codon codes for phenyl alanine (UUU).

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