Researchers are adding new evidence to the emerging concept that 'silent' or synonymous mutations may have crucial consequences. Their study showed how a synonymous mutation in one gene can ...

Genes hold the recipe for proteins, which are made of amino acids. DNA only has four letters, or nucleotides, and each sequence of three nucleotide bases, or codon, encodes for one amino acid. There ...

Occasionally, single-letter misspellings in the genetic code, known as point mutations, occur. Point mutations that alter the resulting protein sequences are called nonsynonymous mutations, while ...

DNA has to be interpreted by cells. The letters or bases that make up genetic sequences are read in sets of three, and those three-base sequences are known as codons. Every codon encodes for one amino ...

Synonymous mutations have long been ignored in cancer studies since they don’t affect the amino acid sequences of proteins. But research increasingly reveals that they can have disease-driving effects ...

A central assumption about so-called synonymous mutations, which are changes in the coding sequence of proteins that do not lead to changes in its amino acid sequence, is being questioned by a study ...

June 5, 2014 – So-called silent DNA mutations earned their title because, according to the fundamental rules of biology, they should be inconsequential. Reported on June 5 in PLOS Genetics online, ...

For decades, researchers have viewed synonymous mutations as inconsequential quirks of the genome. Due to the way the genetic code is set up—where multiple three-base-pair codons can encode the same ...

The researchers of this new study wrote that although SMA carrier screening is recommended for all couples, current testing methods primarily focus on copy number loss of SMN1, which can result in ...

Point mutations that alter the resulting protein sequences are called nonsynonymous mutations, while those that do not alter protein sequences are called silent or synonymous mutations. Between ...