Biochemistry 6th Edition by Reginald Garrett,Charles Grisham

Exercise 12

A Simple Genome and Its Protein-Encoding Capacity
The genome of the Mycoplasma genitalium consists of 523 genes, encoding 484 proteins, in just 580,074 base pairs (Table 1.6). What fraction of the M. genitalium genes encodes proteins? What do you think the other genes encode? If the fraction of base pairs devoted to protein-coding genes is the same as the fraction of the total genes that they represent, what is the average number of base pairs per protein-coding gene? If it takes 3 base pairs to specify an amino acid in a protein, how many amino acids are found in the average M. genitalium protein? If each amino acid contributes on average 120 daltons to the mass of a protein, what is the mass of an average M. genitalium protein?