Smilin is a (hypothetical) protein that causes people to be happy. It is inactive in many chronically unhappy people. The mRNA isolated from a number of different unhappy persons in the same family was found to lack an internal stretch of 173-nucleotides that are present in the Smilin mRNA isolated from a control group of generally happy people. The DNA sequences of the Smilin genes from the happy and unhappy persons were determined and compared. They differed by just one nucleotide change---and no nucleotides were deleted. Moreover, the change was found in an intron.
Can you hypothesize a molecular mechanism by which a single nucleotide change in a gene could cause the observed internal deletion in the mRNA? Be sure to include a comparison of the mechanism that is involved between what happens in the normal and mutant transcript.
What consequences for the Smilin protein would result from removing a 173-nucleotide-long internal stretch from the coding region of the Smiling mRNA?