One of life’s many mysteries is how it ended up choosing only a set of 20 amino acids to build proteins for its wide catalog of organisms, from single-celled bacteria to behemoth whales. From a chemical standpoint, many of the canonical amino acids share similar chemical structures and properties, which might make them expendable. This raises an intriguing question: could life manage with one less amino acid?
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If there are over 500 types of amino acids, my questions is: What the limiting factor is in creating the bonds needed to form proteins? It’s cool that you could use one less amino acid, but why not more? It seems like this is a time/evolution question, but the answer may be simpler than that.
