Reply to post: "the unused codons perform a 'halt and catch fire' function, so their use should be avoided."

"the unused codons perform a 'halt and catch fire' function, so their use should be avoided."

Actually the code is redundant.

Some amino acids are coded twice or three times by different codons. One (IIRC) is coded only once (not the "stop" codon).

Obviously this means some part of the DNA that cods for a protein (any protein) are much more robust to mutation. A 1 character change does not change the amino acid being coded.

OTOH if it's a part of the molecule that's the amino acid that has only 1 code for it, and that changes....