A frameshift mutation is a form of mutation that involves the insertion or deletion of a nucleotide in which the number of deleted base pairs is not divisible by three. It is the most common type of mutation. A gene’s ability to be divided by three is crucial because the cell reads a gene in groups of three nucleotides at a time. In the case of proteins, each group of three bases corresponds to one of the twenty different amino acids that are employed in the construction of the protein. The entire DNA sequence following the mutation will be read wrongly if this reading frame is disrupted as a result of a mutation.
A frameshift mutation is a type of mutation that involves the insertion or deletion of additional bases of DNA in either the X or Y chromosomes. But it’s the third digit that’s important in this case. The number of bases that are either added or deleted cannot be divisible by three, regardless of how many are added. And that’s significant because the cell reads genes in groups of three bases, which is how a gene is read by the cell. There are 20 different amino acids that your body uses to form proteins, and each group of three bases corresponds to one of these amino acids. Furthermore, keep in mind that your body contains a significant amount of protein; everything from the material that makes up your skin to the material that makes up your hair to the digestive secretions that aid in the digestion of that delicious lunch you just had has protein in some form. If a mutation causes a disruption in one of those reading frames, resulting in the substitution of the erroneous amino acid, the entire DNA sequence after the mutation will be disrupted or read improperly as a result. Premature termination is something we witness on a regular basis. Instead of being a specific size, the encoded protein will end up being considerably shorter, and it will be unable to perform the function that has been assigned to it in the first place.
Frameshift mutation: An overview
A frameshift mutation (also known as a framing error or a reading frame shift) is a genetic mutation induced by indels (insertions or deletions) in a DNA sequence that are not divisible by three. Given the triplet structure of gene expression as expressed by codons, the insertion or deletion of a codon might cause a change in the reading frame (the grouping of codons), resulting in a translation that is fundamentally different from the original. Generally speaking, the sooner in the sequence the deletion or insertion occurs, the more significantly affected the protein is. A frameshift mutation is not the same as a single-nucleotide polymorphism, in which a nucleotide is substituted rather than inserted or deleted, as is the case with insertions and deletions. In general, a frameshift mutation will cause the reading of the codons after the mutation to code for different amino acids than the reading of the codons before the mutation. The frameshift mutation will also cause the first stop codon (“UAA,” “UGA,” or “UAG”) to be met in the sequence to be altered. The polypeptide that is being produced may be unusually short or abnormally long, and it will almost certainly be ineffective in its intended purpose.
Different forms of indel mutations
Frameshift mutations are visible in severe genetic diseases such as Tay–Sachs disease; they increase susceptibility to certain cancers and classes of familial hypercholesterolemia; and, in 1997, a frameshift mutation was found to be associated with resistance to infection by the HIV retrovirus. Frameshift mutations are also visible in rare genetic diseases such as Huntington’s disease. In some cases, such as the claimed discovery of nylonase, frameshift mutations have been offered as a source of biological novelty. This interpretation, however, has been met with opposition. According to a study conducted by Negoro et al (2006), a frameshift mutation was unlikely to have been the genesis of nylonase, and that a two amino acid alteration in the active region of an ancestral esterase was more likely to have caused the enzyme.
The information stored in DNA is responsible for determining the activity of proteins in the cells of all organisms. The processes of transcription and translation allow this information to be transferred and translated into the production of proteins. However, even if the cell integrates a range of correction procedures, a mistake in the reading of this communication might result in improper protein function and, eventually, disease.
Conclusion
It is a form of genetic mutation that occurs when the number of nucleotides in DNA sequences that are not multiples of three are altered. It is caused by a change in the reading frame of the sequence that causes a frameshift mutation to develop. Because the codons for gene expression are formed by triplets of nucleotides, the variation in nucleotides results in a change in the frame of the gene.