Missense mutation

What is a missense mutation?

A missense mutation occurs when a piece of DNA is changed, causing different amino acids to be encoded at a specific location in the resultant protein. The function of the resultant protein is altered by several missense mutations.


Missense mutations can modify an amino acid in a protein without affecting its function and are therefore considered benign.

Missense mutations do not always result in noticeable protein alterations. A neutral, "quiet," "silent," or conservative mutation occurs when an amino acid is replaced with another amino acid with extremely comparable chemical characteristics and the protein continues to function correctly. Alternatively, the amino acid change might occur in a part of the protein that has no effect on the secondary structure or function of the protein. When an amino acid may be represented by many codons (so-called "degenerate coding"), a codon mutation may not result in a change in translation; this is a synonymous replacement rather than a missense mutation.

Posted By InnoTechzz

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