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As far as I know proteins are built by sequentially reading triplets of nucleotides.
But if at a certain point a nucleotide is inserted in the sequence, the following sequence of triplets is completely different.

For example:

AATACGGTACCATTA ...

AAT ACG GTA CCA TTA ...

But inserting a nucleotide B at second place we get

ABA TAC GGT ACC ATT ...

Which is completely different.

However I know from theory that a single nucleotide insertion is not dangerous in most cases.

Could someone clarify my mind about this?

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    $\begingroup$ However I know from theory that a single nucleotide insertion is not dangerous in most cases. Do you have a citation for that? $\endgroup$
    – tel
    Dec 30, 2014 at 14:40
  • $\begingroup$ @tel maybe I was remembering wrong. $\endgroup$
    – HAL9000
    Dec 31, 2014 at 8:51

1 Answer 1

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A single substitution can often be silent, or at least not impact the structure and function of the resulting protein in a significant way. But what you describe is a frameshift, and that is one of the most destructive mutations. It will completely change the sequence of the protein after this mutation and disrupt the function of those parts of the protein.

Insertions or deletions that result in a frameshift are absolutely destructive mutations.

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