Demosthenes had five triremes and their complements of soldiers as a garrison, and was reinforced by 40 hoplites from a Messenian ship that happened to stop at Pylos.
Individual codons code for specific amino acids. A gene is a sequence of nucleotides along a DNA strand-with 'start' and 'stop' codons and other regulatory elements-that specifies a sequence of amino acids that are linked together to form a protein.
The Î² globin chains are encoded by a single gene on chromosome 11; Î± globin chains are encoded by two closely linked genes on chromosome 16. Thus, in a normal person with two copies of each chromosome, two loci encode the Î² chain, and four loci encode the Î± chain. Deletion of one of the Î± loci has a high prevalence in people of African or Asian descent, making them more likely to develop Î±-thalassemia.