Final answer:
If a protein is 300 amino acids long, the maximum number of theoretical alleles for the gene that codes for the protein is 1.43 x 10^180.
Step-by-step explanation:
The number of possible alleles for a gene that codes for a protein depends on the number of nucleotide bases in the genetic code and the length of the protein.
In the genetic code, a three-nucleotide codon corresponds to one amino acid, and there are 64 possible codons. However, only 20 common amino acids are found in proteins. This means that some amino acids are encoded by multiple codons.
For a protein that is 300 amino acids long, the maximum number of theoretical alleles for the gene that codes for the protein is 4300, which is approximately 1.43 x 10180.