If an intron fails to get removed from an mRNA, and it is 25 nucleotides long, then how many more amino acids would the final polypeptide contain?a)25b)8c)9d)24Correct answer is option 'B'. Can you explain this answer?

Question

Answer

Explanation:
Introns are non-coding regions of DNA that are transcribed into pre-mRNA but are removed during the process of RNA splicing to generate mature mRNA. The remaining coding regions of mRNA are called exons, which are translated into amino acids to form a polypeptide chain.

If an intron fails to be removed from mRNA, it means that the intron sequence will also be translated along with the exons. This will result in the incorporation of additional amino acids into the polypeptide chain.

Given that the length of the intron is 25 nucleotides, we need to determine the corresponding number of amino acids that would be added to the polypeptide.

Conversion from nucleotides to amino acids:
To determine the number of amino acids, we need to consider that each amino acid is coded by a sequence of three nucleotides called a codon. Therefore, we need to divide the length of the intron by three to obtain the number of codons.

25 nucleotides / 3 nucleotides per codon = 8.33 codons

Since we cannot have a fraction of a codon, we round down to the nearest whole number, which is 8 codons.

Number of additional amino acids:
Each codon codes for one amino acid. Therefore, the 8 codons in the intron will result in the incorporation of 8 additional amino acids into the polypeptide chain.

Therefore, the final polypeptide will contain 8 more amino acids than if the intron had been correctly removed.

Hence, the correct answer is option B) 8.

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