Question

Hi,

If a gene for neprilysin contains 80 000 base pairs, and neprilysin contains only 749 amino acids, can anyone explain the significance of the difference between the numbers ?

Can anyone suggest a place where I can read more on this topic ?

Thanks.....

Answer 1

It means there are many introns (ie, bits of the gene that aren't transcribed). 749 aa means 749 x 3 base pairs in the mature mRNA. Which means a good portion of the 80k bp were not transcribed (about 97%), and hence not translated to aa. You can also infer that it's a eukaryotic gene, because prokaryotic genes don't contain introns.

Look at the wiki entry for "Gene".

Answer 2

Hi HooBoo

Many Thanks :-)

I now understand .......