Imagine you were there when Stanley Miller performed his experiment to produce the building blocks of life. If Miller originally identified 5 different amino acids, how many polypeptides that are 10 amino acids long could be made from just these 5 amino acids?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The number of polypeptides that can be made from n different amino acids of length m is given by n^m. In this case, n=5 (number of different amino acids) and m=10 (length of polypeptide). Thus, the number of polypeptides that can be made from just these 5 amino acids is 5^10 = 9,765,625.

Imagine You Were There When Stanley Miller Performed His Experiment