[BIO206H5] - Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (89 pages long!)
Document Summary
Occasionally, mutations can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics that are used to kill them. Mutations can also produce smaller variations that underlie many of the differences b/w individuals of the same species. However, mutations can be detrimental: in humans they are responsible for thousands of inherited diseases, and for many types of cancer. Thus, the survival of the cell or organism depends on keeping changes in its dna to a minimum. Dna replication produces two complete double helices from the original dna molecules, each new dna helix identical in nucleotide sequence to the parental dna double helix (unless there was a rare copying error) Each daughter dna double helices ends up with one of the original (old) strands plus one strand that is completely new this style of replication is said to be semiconservative. The dna double helix is normally very stable.
