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Why are start and end amino acids encoded by only one codon?

User Amitlicht
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1 Answer

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15 votes

Answer:

The nucleotide triplet that encodes an amino acid is called a codon. Each group of three nucleotides encodes one amino acid. Since there are 64 combinations of 4 nucleotides taken three at a time and only 20 amino acids, the code is degenerate (more than one codon per amino acid, in most cases).

User Zach Jensz
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