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This would require rewriting all the existing DNA, though, to collapse all existing code for those 23 dual-coded amino acids to whichever code we decide is cano
by azernik 8y ago
This would require rewriting all the existing DNA, though, to collapse all existing code for those 23 dual-coded amino acids to whichever code we decide is canonical.
- lvs 8y agoNot really. It's just a question of codon frequency. Organismic codon bias ensures that some codons are actually used quite rarely in the genome already. Specifically, the frequency of TAG stop codons is ~0.03% in E. coli, and the frequency of TGA is 0.1%. By comparison, the frequency of CTA leucine codons is ~0.3%. So it's only 10-fold more effort than the easiest codon, and ~3X more effort than the next easiest. And it may really not be necessary to recode all of them.