# Codon

National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

## Source

National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). *Codon*.

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A codon is a trinucleotide sequence of DNA or RNA that corresponds to a specific amino acid. The genetic code describes the relationship between the sequence of DNA bases (A, C, G, and T) in a gene and the corresponding protein sequence that it encodes. The cell reads the sequence of the gene in groups of three bases. There are 64 different codons: 61 specify amino acids while the remaining three are used as stop signals.