Biochemistry 2280A Lecture Notes - Wobble Base Pair, Tetracycline, Operon
7 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
Number of human diseases related to defects in translation process. Genetic code: the genetic code spells out the amino acid sequence in 3 letter words called codons, why is each codon 3 bases, we know there are 20 a. a. If codons were only one base, then we could only code 4^1 a. a. if 2 bases, then we could only code for 4^2=16 a. a so that"s not enough. The code is non overlapping, so the codons are consecutive. An overlapping code would look like this, which does not happen. If the code were overlapping, the codon for the preceding a. a would in part determine the following codon. That would impose restrictions then on the sequence of a. a in proteins, because what was in front would determine what was behind, and thus the diversity and function of proteins would be limited. The restrictions would be greater if it was a 2 base overlap.
