13) As a future biologist, you are studying alien cells from the planet Pandora
ID: 82650 • Letter: 1
Question
13) As a future biologist, you are studying alien cells from the planet Pandora in the Alpha Centauri star system. You find that these cells contain RNA consisting of 10 different nucleotide bases, and proteins consisting of 76 different amino acids. You hypothesize that the smallest possible codons in the genetic code of these alien cells would contain how many nucleotide “letters” per codon?
a) 1 b) 2 c) 3 d) 4 e) 5
14) True or False: considering what you know about the genetic code, if you know the exact sequence of amino acids in a bacterial protein, you can deduce the exact sequence of nucleotides in DNA that coded for that protein.
a) True b) False
I need help with questions 13 and 14 and an explanation. Thank you!
Explanation / Answer
Answer 13: Choice b is correct
Reason: Considering that a total of 76 different amino acids are required to be synthesized and assuming that 4 nucleotides can exist for this alien, the maximum number of letters per codon, i.e. n, that can be present will be given by: 10n = 76. If we put the value of n =2, the maximum number of amino acids that can be synthesized will be 100 and all 76 amino acids in this alien will be synthesized. Thus, the number of letters in each codon will be given by 2.
Answer 14: The statement is false
Reason: The genetic code of the organisms contain 64 sets of codon sequences which encode for nearly 20 amino acids found in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. This suggests that more than one codon sequence and hence, respective DNA sequence can be responsible for encoding a similar amino acid. Thus, it is not possible to exactly determine the DNA sequence from which the requisite amino acid has been synthesized, only a closely correct sequence can be derived.
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