Transfer RNA
Transfer RNA (tRNA) availbility is one of the reasons that a silent mutation might not be silent at all. For every codon there's a different tRNA molecule. So there's a tRNA specifically for the codon UCU and another specifically for the codon UCC (and so on for all the codons). Both of those tRNA molecules carry the amino-acid serine to the ribosome that is translating a mRNA molecule. However, if there's (for example) a thousand times less UCC tRNA than UCU tRNA, then the incorporation of serine happens a thousand times slower when a mutation causes the codon to change from UCU to UCC. If it takes longer for the amino-acids to reach the ribosome, translation takes longer. This results in a lower expression of a certain gene with that 'silent' mutation. Also, if the ribosome has to wait too long, it might terminate translation prematurely.
Read more about this topic: Silent Mutation
Famous quotes containing the word transfer:
“I have proceeded ... to prevent the lapse from ... the point of blending between wakefulness and sleep.... Not ... that I can render the point more than a point—but that I can startle myself ... into wakefulness—and thus transfer the point ... into the realm of Memory—convey its impressions,... to a situation where ... I can survey them with the eye of analysis.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)