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  4. A codon is made up of:

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Q. A codon is made up of:

Delhi UMET/DPMTDelhi UMET/DPMT 2005

Solution:

Each word of codon consists of $3$ letters i.e., the codon is triplet. Thus we can say that each amino acid is specified by $3$ nitrogenous bases in DNA/RNA. Since there are $4$ nitrogenous bases which code for $20$ amino acids, a single nitrogenous base is insufficient because through this only $4$ combinations are possible. Similarly a combination of $2$ nitrogenous bases ($16$ codons) are also insufficient for $20$ amino acids.