Question
Biology Question on the molecular basis of inheritance
Degeneration of a genetic code is attributed to the
A
First member of a codon
B
Second member of codon
C
Entire codon
D
Third member of a codon
Answer
Third member of a codon
Explanation
Solution
In a triplet for a particular amino acid more than one word (synonyms) can be used. This phenomenon is described by saying that the code is degenerate. A degenerate code would be one where there is one to one relation between aminoacids and the codons that 44 codons out of 64 will be useless or nonsense codons. A code is degenerate because of the third base of the codon. It has been shown that the same /RNA can recognize more than one codons differing only at the third position. For example GCU, GCC and GCA all code for alanine amino acids.