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21 February, 16:55

How many different DNA strands composed of 100 nucleotides could possibly exist?

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  1. 21 February, 16:56
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    Answer: There are 4¹⁰⁰ possible strands, approximately 1.61x10⁶⁰

    Explanation:

    This is a combinatorics problem. Each nucleotide has the possibility of being one of the four common nucleotides, adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T) and cytosine (C).

    If the strand would be 1 nucleotide long, the possibilities would be 4, one for each possible nucleotide. If the strand would be 2 nucleotides long, for each nucleotide on the first position there would be four possible nucleotides on the second position, giving 4x4=4²=16 possible strands.

    For 3 nucleotides long you have 4 possible nucleotides for each of the 2-nucleotide-long strands, 4x4x4=4²=64 possible strands. Following that pattern, for a 100 nucleotide long DNA strand, there would be 4x4x ... x4x4=4¹⁰⁰ possible strands.
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