BIOL 202 Lecture Notes - Guanine, Lysine, Ap Endonuclease
21 May 2012
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Document Summary
While mutations are considered in the media to be gigantic monster producing phenomenon resulting from extreme nuclear radiation and the likes, the reality of mutation is discrete phenotypic changes, like in the color of an ant. These changes are sometimes involved in color, or slight morphological changes, but we have yet to create a godzilla-like mutant organism. Genetic variation has two main causes: mutation and recombination. Mutation causes the rise of new alleles, which are new variants of genes; they slightly differ from the wild-type in their aspects and resulting phenotype. Recombination is when alleles are shuffled differently during meiosis, which can cause the passing out of maternal of paternal chromosomes. The balance between mutation and selection allows for adaptation to occur, and is in fact the basis of evolution. Mutations are changes in a dna sequence which can lead to an altered coding region or a gene regulatory sequence.
