frameshift

English

Etymology

frame +‎ shift

Noun

frameshift (countable and uncountable, plural frameshifts)

1. A frameshift mutation.

Verb

frameshift (third-person singular simple present frameshifts, present participle frameshifting, simple past and past participle frameshifted)

1. To use a starting point for translating a series of nucleotides that is off by an amount not divisible by three, resulting in an entirely distinct set of codons.
   • 2003, Jacques Lapointe, Lea Brakier-Gigras, Translation Mechanisms, →ISBN, page 354:

     Commonly, there are stimulatory signals in mRNA distinct from the shift site that greatly increase the level of frameshifting at the shift site.

   • 2004, DNA and Cell Biology - Volume 23, page 702:

     Considering these costs, it seems likely that mechanisms may exist to stop frameshifted translation as soon as possible, depending on the frequency of occurrence.

   • 2006, De-Shuang Huang, George William Irwin, Computational Intelligence and Bioinformatics, →ISBN:

     Ribosomal frameshifting at a particular site can yield two protein products from one coding sequence or one protein product from two overlapping open reading frames.