What evolutionary reason for multiple codons per amino acid?

[JimmyJazz]

Here's what I'm referring to, note how most amino acids are coded for by multiple codons (up to six codons for certain amino acids):

http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/courses/27619/codon.html

Certainly, using all 64 codons for 64 different amino acids would have allowed for much more complexity and diversity of proteins, right? (And probably made biochem a 4-semester class! yikes).

Are there any good conjectures about why evolution produced the repeats?

[JackBean]

can you list 64 possible and reasonable amino acids?

[Darby]

It makes the code redundant.

[JimmyJazz]

can you list 64 possible and reasonable amino acids?

Since I'm a Psych major who has never taken a class on this stuff and has simply been doing a little bit of reading online, the answer is no. I have no clue what you mean by reasonable.

I'm planning on taking some serious bio and chem classes as prep for a neuroscience PhD, but for the moment I'm a complete bio/chem amateur getting what I can from free stuff on the internet.

[JackBean]

One can think of thousands alpha-amino acids, but 99.9% would be impossible to synthesize and unreasonable for the structure. That's why I wrote reasonable.

[JimmyJazz]

One can think of thousands alpha-amino acids, but 99.9% would be impossible to synthesize and unreasonable for the structure. That's why I wrote reasonable.

Thanks. It seems the answer to my question is a bit over my head for now.