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In contrast to a DNA damage, a mutation is an alteration of the base sequence of the DNA. Ordinarily, a mutation cannot be recognized by enzymes once the base change is present in both DNA strands, and thus a mutation is not ordinarily repaired. At the cellular level, mutations can alter protein function and regulation.
A site in a protein-coding sequence of DNA is nonsynonymous if a point mutation at that site results in a change in the amino acid, resulting in a change in the organism's phenotype. [3] Typically, silent mutations in protein-coding regions are used as the "control" in the McDonald–Kreitman test.
Slipped strand mispairing (SSM, also known as replication slippage) is a mutation process which occurs during DNA replication. It involves denaturation and displacement of the DNA strands, resulting in mispairing of the complementary bases. Slipped strand mispairing is one explanation for the origin and evolution of repetitive DNA sequences. [1]
A hitchhiker mutation (or passenger mutation in cancer biology) may itself be neutral, advantageous, or deleterious. [ 7 ] Recombination can interrupt the process of genetic hitchhiking, ending it before the hitchhiking neutral or deleterious allele becomes fixed or goes extinct. [ 6 ]
Though genealogical DNA tests are not designed mainly for medical purposes, autosomal DNA tests can be used to analyze the probability of hundreds of heritable medical conditions, [78] albeit the result is complex to understand and may confuse a non-expert. 23andMe provides medical and trait information from their genealogical DNA test [79] and ...
The neutral mutation rate is affected by the amount of neutral sites in a protein or DNA sequence versus the amount of mutation in sites that are functionally constrained. By quantifying these neutral mutations in protein and/or DNA and comparing them between species or other groups of interest, rates of divergence can be determined. [33] [36]
While each of these steps are individually reversible (for example, A may regain the capacity to function independently or the A:B interaction may be lost), a random sequence of mutations tends to further reduce the capacity of A to function independently and a random walk through the dependency space may very well result in a configuration in ...
A population bottleneck is when a population contracts to a significantly smaller size over a short period of time due to some random environmental event. In a true population bottleneck, the odds for survival of any member of the population are purely random, and are not improved by any particular inherent genetic advantage.