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👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So we have four nucleotide letters that compose DNA, and they are processed in the translation in triplets.
So you have in triplet codon fragments.
So you have four times four times four.
So you have 64 possible states that can be encoded by four letters in three positions.
There is only one code that says start.
There's only one.
And then there's two, if not three, that says stop.
So that's what you work with.
But you can have 64 possible states, but life only uses 20.
amino acids.
So we use six life uses 64 possible states minus four of the starts and stops to code for 20 amino acids in different combinations.
That is really amazing.
If you think about there, there are 500 different amino acids life can choose, right?
It's,
Narrowed it down to 20.
We don't know why.
A lot of people think about this genetic code is quite fascinating.
So far, right?
I mean, it didn't do it for 4 billion years.
I don't know.