The Genetic Code

Question 1

What is the genetic code

Answer 1

Is the scheme used by the cell to translate a nucleotide sequence into an amino acid sequence during protein synthesis

Question 2

What is the first rule

Answer 2

The code is made of triplets

Question 3

Explain the crick and Brenner experiment

Answer 3

They used a bacteriophage as a model and a drug called proflavin (mutagen with planer structure) This can intercalate between one pair of DNA causing insertions and deletions.
The phage accumulated mutations and was unable to grow exponentially.
The result: realising that the nuc,peptides are read in triplets, and most of the 64 triplets are coding, the code is not overlapped

Question 4

What is the difference between an overlapped and a non overlapped code

Answer 4

An insertion/deletion in an overlapped code would result in 3 extra amino acids but eventually we would have the sequence that we needed.
An insertion/deletion in a non overlapped code would result in a completely changed amino acid sequnce

Question 5

Is the genetic code comma’d

Answer 5

No the genetic code is comma less

Question 6

List 5 properties of the genetic code

Answer 6

Is composed on nucleotide triplets, is non-overlapping, is comma less and degenerate( meaning more than one triplets can code for the same amino acid). It is universal

Question 7

What is the wobble hypothesis

Answer 7

That a mutation in the 3rd nucleotide of a codon does not affect the amino acid the codon was supposed to code for

Question 8

The Genetic Code is non ambiguous what does this mean

Answer 8

It means that a specific codon will always code for a specific amino acid