In the context of types of mutations, what is the key difference between a missense mutation and a nonsense mutation?

• A. A missense mutation always has no effect on the protein, whereas a nonsense mutation always increases the length of the protein.
• B. A missense mutation occurs only in introns, whereas a nonsense mutation occurs only in exons.
• C. A missense mutation changes a codon to specify a different amino acid, whereas a nonsense mutation changes a codon into a stop codon, causing premature termination of translation.
• D. A missense mutation deletes one nucleotide from the coding sequence, whereas a nonsense mutation inserts one nucleotide into the coding sequence.

Answer: (C)