4. A gene encodes a protein with the following amino acid sequence A nonsense mu
ID: 173276 • Letter: 4
Question
Explanation / Answer
Answer:
4. a. Original protein: Met-Lys-Ser-Pro-Ala-Thr-Pro
Mutated protein: Met-Lys-Stop
So, the codon encoding Ser got mutated to a stop codon.
Codons of serine: UCU, UCC, UCA, UCG
Stop codons: UAA, UGA, UAG
So, possible codons of serine which can be converted to a stop codon through a single base substitution are:
i. UCA: Changing the C either to A or G. (Stop codons: UAA and UGA)
ii. UCG: Changing the C to A. (Stop codons: UAG)
b. The nonsense mutant can potentially be suppressed by nonsense suppressor tRNA, in which a sense codon has been changed to be able to decode the nonsense triplet.
Since it is a tRNA, it is found in the cytoplasm.
c. In practice, only amber suppressors have been recovered.
So, UCG to UAG (amber) is the most likely change which occured in the gene.