Question

Life forms on a newly discovered exo-planet (planet found outside of our solar system) are somewhat similar to those found on Earth. Their proteins are made of 10 different amino acids and their DNA and RNA only contain two different nucleotide bases, instead of four. This observation suggests that the codons coding for the amino acids are likely to be at least how many bases long?

Answer 1

2 base long codon

Step-by-step explanation:

In the given question, the total number of amino acids is about 10 and the number of nucleotide bases is only two.

So these two nucleotides will be arranged in a maximum of
`2^(2)` as there are only two nucleotides and either each nucleotide will code for a single amino acid or in pairs of two it will code for specific amino acids. Therefore the maximum amino acid chain will be formed by the four bases of amino acids.

Thus, 2 base long codon will be correct.