Frame shift

A frame shift is a form of mutation that can occur in living organisms, this occurs by the insertion or deletion of a number of bases that arent divisible by the number three. This can cause a different amino acids to be formed from the original code. This can result in a different protein being produced which doesn't perform the same function as it once did therefore becoming a transcuted protein. There is a possibility that the new codon formed can be a stop codon (one in twenty chance) which will stop the polypeptide chain from fully being produced. Frame shift mutuations can occur through slippages at repeat sequences during replication. It is a very unstable mutation and many different codons can be produced from the wild type genetic code.

A frame shift mutation is one of many mutations including, base pair changes, deletion, insertion, inversion and duplications.