BIOL2202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Mutation, Reading Frame, Mutagen
Document Summary
When told to find amino acids in a sequence of dna, there are different reading frames. The correct reading frame is dependent on a clue the question provides asking what to look for. Below are common phrases in the question that indicate what to look for to identify the correct reading frame. Mutant: an organism that has an unconventional phenotype. Mutation frequency: dna is a little bit unstable, there is spontaneous deamination of cytosine (to uracil) Mutation may not be beneficial to the specie itself, but on a population level, it is needed for evolution and for species to overcome each other. Even though there is a repair/replication mechanism, they can create further mistakes when repairing: there is spontaneous hydrolysis of purines (guanine and adenine) 10 000 purines are lost per day in humans: mutagens increase the frequency of mutations. Spontaneous mutations: caused by unknown agents in environment, caused by metabolic errors.
