{"id":1949,"date":"2014-06-11T19:24:21","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T00:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=1949"},"modified":"2014-06-11T19:24:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T00:24:21","slug":"silent-mutations-arent-so-silent-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/silent-mutations-arent-so-silent-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent mutations aren\u2019t so silent after all<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-110\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\" alt=\"SMCC-english2\" width=\"255\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">A new study suggests that \u2018silent\u2019 mutations &#8211; changes to DNA that don\u2019t alter the structure of the protein it encodes &#8211; may nonetheless have an impact on evolution. For example, alanine &#8211; an amino acid, one of the building blocks of DNA &#8211; can be encoded as GCC, GCA or GCG; these codes are theoretically equivalent and a mutation between them wouldn\u2019t change the structure of the protein. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">According to the new study, such mutations do appear to have an impact on how much protein is produced, which in turn can impact fitness. If silent mutations do indeed have an effect, it could mean big changes for how we \u2018read\u2019 genomes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ncomms\/2014\/140610\/ncomms5076\/full\/ncomms5076.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Original research paper<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the\u00a0journal\u00a0<em>Nature Communications<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>June 10, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\">Susan F. Bailey, University of Ottawa, Ontario<\/h4>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"color: #222222;\">Rees Kassen, University of Ottawa, Ontario<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study suggests that \u2018silent\u2019 mutations &#8211; changes to DNA that don\u2019t alter the structure of the protein it encodes &#8211; may nonetheless have an impact on evolution. For example, alanine &#8211; an amino acid, one of the building blocks of DNA &#8211; can be encoded as GCC, GCA or GCG; these codes are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[113,917,909,51,53,50,476],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biology","tag-evolution","tag-genetics","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-ontario","tag-public-health"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-vr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1951,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions\/1951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}