Information


Frameshift has a minion!

Minion the Dizzy




Frameshift
Legacy Name: Frameshift


The Custom Common Experiment #404
Owner: Tashamon

Age: 8 years, 7 months, 4 weeks

Born: September 1st, 2015

Adopted: 8 years, 7 months, 4 weeks ago

Adopted: September 1st, 2015


Pet Spotlight Winner
May 19th, 2016

Statistics


  • Level: 1
     
  • Strength: 10
     
  • Defense: 10
     
  • Speed: 11
     
  • Health: 10
     
  • HP: 10/10
     
  • Intelligence: 0
     
  • Books Read: 0
  • Food Eaten: 0
  • Job: Unemployed


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Sometimes, it only takes a small change to make a big difference. And where DNA is concerned, the smallest change can make the biggest difference. Deoxyribonucleic acid is a self-replicating organic compound made of two polynucleotide strands spiralled around each other in an iconic double helix shape. Each strand consists of a chain of nucleotides, and each type of nucleotide on one strand will only bond to a specific type on the other strand, i.e. Adenine to Thymine, and Cytosine to Guanine. The sequence of nucleotides (or bases) in the strand can ultimately determine the sequence of amino acids in a protein that is produced - one amino acid to every 3 bases (aka a codon) - which then determines its shape.

Because of this relationship, if a nucleotide in the DNA strand is inserted or deleted, it can completely change the structure of the protein produced - often to disastrous effect. Insertions and deletions of bases in numbers non-divisible by three are known as frameshift mutations. This is because they change the reading frame, resulting in every codon after the mutation being changed. The earlier in the sequence that these changes occur, the greater the change to the resultant protein there will be, resulting in a radically altered and possibly non-functional protein.

Diseases caused by these types of mutations currently have no cure. However the use of modified viruses to insert working copies of a gene into affected cells, or gene therapy, is currently being developed as a treatment and in the future it may even be possible to fix the malfunctioning genes entirely.

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