A researcher proposes that the transmembrane portion of a certain protein consists of 24 amino acids. Based on the proposed model, calculate the number of nucleotides in the mRNA that encode only the amino acids in the transmembrane portion of the protein.

The answer is 72 nucleotides. This is calculated by multiplying 24 by 3. This is because we know that an amino acid is coded through codons. Codons are sequences of 3 nucleotides that either code for a particular nucleotide, of the 23 total nucleotides, or is a stop or start codon (that stops or initiates translation respectively)