Why codon is triplet?
“you have four bases, A, U, G, C if each codon consists of one nucleotide, you’d have only four amino acids possible, one for each letter. If each codon consists of 2 bases, you’d have only 16 possible amino acids (4^2), which is still less than the 20 AA you can have in a protein. With 3 nucleotides/codon, you’d have 64 (4^3) possible amino acids per codon. That’s more than necessary, so some combinations are repeating, but this much is necessary to code the 20 amino acids. Some combinations will make the same amino acids, so that’s why the code is said to be degerate (extra info). This allows for some point mutations to occur and not mess up the gene product.
