To determine the length of the protein in terms of the number of amino acids given that the amino acid coding region in a mRNA is 1200 nucleotides long, we need to understand how nucleotide sequences correspond to amino acids.
Each amino acid in a protein is encoded by a sequence of three nucleotides, known as a codon. Therefore, to find out the number of amino acids that can be encoded by a given number of nucleotides, we divide the total number of nucleotides by the number of nucleotides in one codon (which is 3).
Given:
- Total number of nucleotides = 1200
Let's calculate the number of amino acids:
[tex]\[ \text{Number of amino acids} = \frac{\text{Total number of nucleotides}}{\text{Number of nucleotides per codon}} \][/tex]
[tex]\[ \text{Number of amino acids} = \frac{1200}{3} \][/tex]
[tex]\[ \text{Number of amino acids} = 400 \][/tex]
Therefore, the number of amino acids that would be encoded by the 1200 nucleotides long mRNA is 400.
So the correct answer is:
C. 400 amino acids
