[joyjoyjoy]

I came across an article about DNA but did not had time to read it and lost it. It was about some ideas why DNA has 4 bases (and not 6 or 8). They also mention why 20 (?) amino acids. It was something similar to degrees of freedom.

Not sure where I saw it. hackernews? Might have been Scientific American.

I anyone remembers I would appreciate a link.

[EForEndeavour]

This Stack Exchange thread has some fascinating answers and links to sources: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/2874/why-are-the...

[david-gpu]

Was it an article about how there are 64 possible encodings of 3 bases (codons), but some of them are synonymous and only 20 unique amino acids are synthetized? And how this redundant encoding appears to be unusually resistant to mutations, as replacing one base with another would often encode a chemically similar amino acid? I remember reading something like that, but I couldn't find it either.

[joyjoyjoy]

No, it argued on a mathematical basis for this.