Question

What is meant by degenerate codon?

(a) Two codons can be read in different frame o give different amino acids

(b) Codons are not having a gap

(c) Specific codon codes for specific amino acid

(d) Two codons can code for same amino acid

I had been asked this question by my school principal while I was bunking the class.

This interesting question is from Genetic Code in portion Gene Expression : Translation of Cytogenetics

Answer 1

The correct choice is (d) Two codons can code for same amino acid

The best explanation: Degeneracy means that there can be two or more codons that can code for same amino acid with there being triplet codon and 4 bases there are 64 possible combinations and only 20 amino acids. This was then observed that different codon could be degenerate i.e. code for same amino acid.