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Does anyone have a sense of why the virus evolved to use this strange "frameshift" mechanism? Is this "hack" somehow advantageous enough for the virus that it w
by FartyMcFarter 5y ago
Does anyone have a sense of why the virus evolved to use this strange "frameshift" mechanism? Is this "hack" somehow advantageous enough for the virus that it would evolve it, rather than using more standard mechanisms?
edit - oh, wikipedia claims this is a compression mechanism, that's amazing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosomal_frameshift#Function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosomal_frameshift#Function
- rsa4046 5y ago“In the case of a translating ribosome, a frameshift can either result in nonsense (a premature stop codon) after the frameshift, or the creation of a completely new protein after the frameshift. In the case where a frameshift results in nonsense, the NMD (nonsense-mediated mRNA decay) pathway may destroy the mRNA transcript, so frameshifting would serve as a method of regulating the expression level of the associated gene.” Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. Love this term! :)
- folli 5y agoCorrect, you can encode two different proteins with the amount (length) of DNA usually used for one protein. This is not really relevant for higher life forms, as DNA is cheap. But for a virus this 'cost saving' can really matter when trying to replicate quickly and cheaply.