Exciting news! you are part of a team of researchers that has discovered a microbial life form on mars. after a great deal of work, you determine that the flow of genetic information and the genetic material in the martian microbe are largely the same as on earth. however, there are some interesting differences.

(a) you discover that the martian microbe uses the same four bases as terrestrial life forms, but uses four bases per codon. this means that the genetic code of the martian microbe has a total of possible codons.

(b) assume that the martian microbe uses 30 different amino acids in the synthesis of its proteins. given your answer to part (a) above, this means that there will be many more nonsense codons than there are sense codons, unless of course the martian genetic code is highly as is the genetic code on earth.

(c) one of your junior colleagues informs you that in the nucleus of the martian microbe, all genes on a given chromosome are transcribed from one strand of the dna double helix. how does this mechanism of gene expression compare to what we observe in all life forms on earth?

(d) you isolate the first restriction enzyme from the martian microbe. it is a six cutter that you name mari. so far, you have only a partial sequence for the recognition site of mari:

5' c g n t c n 3'

3' g c n a g n 5'

(where n signifies an unknown base) if the recognition site of mari is palindromic, as is true for most terrestrial restriction sites, then what must be the full sequence of the mari recognition site?