Number
of
Nucleotides
in
Average
Gene
It is possible to find out the number of nucleotides in a gene if the molecular weight of the gene is known, since each base pair has a molecular weight of about 600.
Thus in the bacteriophage T4, which has over a 100 genes and a chromosomal molecular weight of 120 million, each gene has an average MW of 1.2 million.
Now, since the molecular weight of a pair of bases is about 600 the average gene should contains about 2,000 base pairs. However, all the genes of T4 are not known.
Assuming
that
the
total
number
of
genes
will
at
maximum
be
doubled,
the
average
gene
would
have
900-1500
base
pairs
