Heartworms are spread to dogs through mosquito bites. Up to 14 inches long, a heartworm lives in the heart and the arteries that carry blood from the heart to the lungs. Heartworms affect how the heart functions and how blood clots and is likely to cause death if untreated. Monthly heartworm preventives are effective.
missense mutation. A substitution of a single DNA nucleotide for another. This results in the transcription of a different amino acid than is normally found in the protein coded by the gene. Missense mutations are found in diseases such as sickle cell anemia.
A missense mutation is when the change of a single base pair causes the substitution of a different amino acid in the resulting protein.This amino acid substitution may have no effect, or it may render the protein nonfunctional. single base pair substitution that results in the translation of a different amino acid at that position. Definition from: GeneReviews from the University of Washington and the National Center for Biotechnology Information.