Suppressor mutation
Type of mutation
A suppressor mutation is a second mutation that alleviates or reverts the phenotypic effects of an already existing mutation in a process defined synthetic rescue. Genetic suppression therefore restores the phenotype seen prior to the original background mutation. Suppressor mutations are useful for identifying new genetic sites which affect a biological process of interest. They also provide evidence between functionally interacting molecules and intersecting biological pathways.
Intragenic vs. intergenic suppression
Intragenic suppression
Intragenic suppression results from suppressor mutations that occur in the same gene as the original mutation. In a classic study, Francis Crick (et al.) used intragenic suppression to study the fundamental nature of the genetic code. From this study it was shown that genes are expressed as non-overlapping triplets (codons).
Researchers showed that mutations caused by either a single base insertion (+) or a single base deletion (-) could be "suppressed" or restored by a second mutation of the opposite sign, as long as the two mutations occurred in the same vicinity of the gene. This led to the conclusion that genes needed to be read in a specific "reading frame" and a single base insertion or deletion would shift the reading frame (frameshift mutation) in such a way that the remaining DNA would code for a different polypeptide than the one intended.
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This entry incorporates text from “Suppressor mutation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.