This article is about the biological term. For other uses, see Mutation (disambiguation).
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A red tulip exhibiting a partially yellow petal due to a mutation in its genesMutation with double bloom in the Langheck Nature Reserve near Nittel, Germany
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA.[1] Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of damage to DNA (such as pyrimidine dimers caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation), which then may undergo error-prone repair (especially microhomology-mediated end joining),[2] cause an error during other forms of repair,[3][4] or cause an error during replication (translesion synthesis). Mutations may also result from insertion or deletion of segments of DNA due to mobile genetic elements.[5][6][7]
Mutations may or may not produce detectable changes in the observable characteristics (phenotype) of an organism. Mutations play a part in both normal and abnormal biological processes including: evolution, cancer, and the development of the immune system, including junctional diversity. Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, providing the raw material on which evolutionary forces such as natural selection can act.
Mutation can result in many different types of change in sequences. Mutations in genes can have no effect, alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning properly or completely. Mutations can also occur in non-genic regions. A 2007 study on genetic variations between different species of Drosophila suggested that, if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, the result is likely to be harmful, with an estimated 70% of amino acid polymorphisms that have damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or marginally beneficial.[8] Due to the damaging effects that mutations can have on genes, organisms have mechanisms such as DNA repair to prevent or correct mutations by reverting the mutated sequence back to its original state.[5]
^"mutation | Learn Science at Scitable". Nature. Nature Education. Retrieved 24 September 2018.
^Sfeir A, Symington LS (November 2015). "Microhomology-Mediated End Joining: A Back-up Survival Mechanism or Dedicated Pathway?". Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 40 (11): 701–714. doi:10.1016/j.tibs.2015.08.006. PMC 4638128. PMID 26439531.
^Chen J, Miller BF, Furano AV (April 2014). "Repair of naturally occurring mismatches can induce mutations in flanking DNA". eLife. 3: e02001. doi:10.7554/elife.02001. PMC 3999860. PMID 24843013.
^Rodgers K, McVey M (January 2016). "Error-Prone Repair of DNA Double-Strand Breaks". Journal of Cellular Physiology. 231 (1): 15–24. doi:10.1002/jcp.25053. PMC 4586358. PMID 26033759.
^ abBertram JS (December 2000). "The molecular biology of cancer". Molecular Aspects of Medicine. 21 (6): 167–223. doi:10.1016/S0098-2997(00)00007-8. PMID 11173079. S2CID 24155688.
^Aminetzach YT, Macpherson JM, Petrov DA (July 2005). "Pesticide resistance via transposition-mediated adaptive gene truncation in Drosophila". Science. 309 (5735): 764–7. Bibcode:2005Sci...309..764A. doi:10.1126/science.1112699. PMID 16051794. S2CID 11640993.
^Burrus V, Waldor MK (June 2004). "Shaping bacterial genomes with integrative and conjugative elements". Research in Microbiology. 155 (5): 376–86. doi:10.1016/j.resmic.2004.01.012. PMID 15207870.
^Sawyer SA, Parsch J, Zhang Z, Hartl DL (April 2007). "Prevalence of positive selection among nearly neutral amino acid replacements in Drosophila". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104 (16): 6504–10. Bibcode:2007PNAS..104.6504S. doi:10.1073/pnas.0701572104. PMC 1871816. PMID 17409186.
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain...
Mutation testing (or mutation analysis or program mutation) is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing software tests. Mutation...
single type of mutation; there are many different types of mutations. Mutation rates are given for specific classes of mutations. Point mutations are a class...
A point mutation is a genetic mutation where a single nucleotide base is changed, inserted or deleted from a DNA or RNA sequence of an organism's genome...
BRCA mutation is a mutation in either of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are tumour suppressor genes. Hundreds of different types of mutations in these...
are called alleles. DNA sequences can change through mutations, producing new alleles. If a mutation occurs within a gene, the new allele may affect the...
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's...
In genetics, a nonsense mutation is a point mutation in a sequence of DNA that results in a nonsense codon, or a premature stop codon in the transcribed...
delimiters. Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment. Mutation occurs in languages...
In genetics, a missense mutation is a point mutation in which a single nucleotide change results in a codon that codes for a different amino acid. It is...
modern Celtic languages, Breton is characterised by initial consonant mutations, which are changes to the initial sound of a word caused by certain syntactic...
germline mutation, or germinal mutation, is any detectable variation within germ cells (cells that, when fully developed, become sperm and ova). Mutations in...
A frameshift mutation (also called a framing error or a reading frame shift) is a genetic mutation caused by indels (insertions or deletions) of a number...
The Mutations (also known as The Mutation, The Freaks, and The Freakmaker) is a low-budget 1974 British-American science fiction/horror film directed...
somatic mutation is a change in the DNA sequence of a somatic cell of a multicellular organism with dedicated reproductive cells; that is, any mutation that...
Mutational signatures are characteristic combinations of mutation types arising from specific mutagenesis processes such as DNA replication infidelity...
colors. Nonsense mutations that created this premature stop codon were later called opal mutations or umber mutations. Nonsense mutations are changes in...
Silent mutations are mutations in DNA that do not have an observable effect on the organism's phenotype. They are a specific type of neutral mutation. The...
Tyranny and Mutation (stylized on the cover as THE BLVE ÖYSTER CVLT: TYRANNY AND MVTATION), the second studio album by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult...
caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal...
A suppressor mutation is a second mutation that alleviates or reverts the phenotypic effects of an already existing mutation in a process defined synthetic...
Mutation may refer to: Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, an American television series Space Quest V, an adventure game, subtitled The Next Mutation RAWGWAR:...
Virus mutation is mutation of viruses and may refer to: The feature of viruses to cause mutation in the human genome The feature of viruses to perform...
Back mutation may refer to: Back mutation, a sound change in Old English Back mutation, a type of genetic mutation This disambiguation page lists articles...
A de novo mutation (DNM) is any mutation or alteration in the genome of an individual organism (human, animal, plant, microbe, etc.) that was not inherited...
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