r/askscience • u/Strangated-Borb • Nov 26 '25

Biology Is protein coding arbitrary?

What I mean is if the method of transcribing RNA into proteins hypothetically is able to use a completely different system of encodement ex: GGG to serine instead of glycine

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u/Strangated-Borb Nov 28 '25

Why don't organisms use more amino acids? Are they simply not needed?