the.com/genetic mutation
Evolution's typos — most are nonsense, a few accidentally write poetry.
means A permanent change in a DNA sequence — a copying error or chemical alteration passed on when cells divide — that can be harmless, harmful, or occasionally useful to the organism.
from From Latin mutare, 'to change,' via mutatio ('a changing, alteration'). Genetic traces to genesis/genus, Greek-rooted words about birth and origin. The two words only got introduced in the late 1800s to early 1900s, when biologists like Hugo de Vries studying heredity needed a term for sudden, heritable changes in traits — distinct from the gradual blending older theories assumed. 'Mutation' was their borrowing of the ordinary word for 'change' into a precise scientific sense: an alteration in the hereditary material itself.
- baseline rate
- every human carries about 70 new mutations
- usually harmless
- most occur in DNA that does not code anything
- the paradox
- it is both the cause of cancer and of evolution
- copying error
- DNA replication makes roughly one mistake per billion letters