what would you expect to be different?

Question

On Planet Doohicky, 200 light years from earth, life forms evolved where a codon is actually 6 nucleotides long. Assuming every other aspect of transcription and translation was the same as on Earth, what would you expect to be different?

Genes would be shorter
Proteins would be longer
Genes would be longer
Proteins would be shorter

Answer 1

Proteins would be shorter. The codons are the blueprints for protein synthesis. Longer codons per amino acid means shorter chains as long as there are the same number of codons as it is here on Earth =)

Answer 2

Genes would be longer because they'd still need to tell the codons for the same proteins. It would just take twice as many bases to do the same job if the codons were 6 bases instead of 3 each.

Answer 3

Assuming that the amino acids on planet doohicky were the same as they are on planet earth and used in the same way to make the same proteins, then I would say genes would be longer. In fact they'd have to be twice as long.