Dr. Brown would like to perform an alanine substitution assay to test the importance of specific amino residues within Protein X. To do so, Dr. Brown will use codon manipulation to replace the amino acid of interest with the small, uncharged amino acid alanine. Which amino acid will be the easiest to substitute in this assay?
The enzyme that you study contains a UAC codon at residue 285, which falls within the active site of the enzyme. You want to alter this codon to test the importance of residue 285 for the enzyme mechanism. However, you are limited to making single point mutations within the codon.
2.
How many alternate codons could you create that would result in a change to residue 285?
