Mutation Notes

Mutation Notes

What is going on in DNA?

Every single cell in an organism contains a copy of the DNA that is specific to that individual. For humans this means that our DNA was copied over 20 trillion times.

​This repeated copying of DNA can cause errors to happen; an changes in an organism’ DNA is called mutations.

What is going on in DNA?

All cells have safeguards that help prevent these mutations from continuing such as a protein that proofreads the DNA and repairs any errors.

What happens if you have a mutations?

When mutations are not fixed by the proofreading proteins a few possibilities could happen;

1. The mutation causes no effect because it is one gene out of trillions that does not work.

2. The mutations can cause minor effects such as altering hair color, eye color, skin color, etc.

What happens if you have a mutations?

3. The mutation can be beneficial by making the organism more resilient to outside factors.

4. The mutation can cause major effects such as genetic disorders that are passed from one generation to the next.

How do some genetic diseases
happen later in life?

Genetic diseases such as diabetes type II and Alzheimer’s disease can appear later in life not because someone’s genetic code suddenly mutated, but because someone’s DNA carried a gene that could cause such disease. This happens when a gene is turned off until environmental factors or lifestyle choices turn it on.

How do some genetic diseases
happen later in life?

Proteins called epigenomes mark certain gene in the
DNA to signal that it needs to be turned on or off. This whole process is called epigenetics.

EPIGENETICS

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