mutation mutation in biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal dna. viral genomes contain either dna or rna. mutations result from errors during dna or viral replication, mitosis, or meiosis or other types of damage to dna (such as pyrimidine dimers caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation), which then may undergo error-prone repair (especially microhomology-mediated end joining), cause an error during other forms of repair, or cause an error during replication (translesion synthesis). mutations may also result from insertion or deletion of segments of dna due to mobile genetic elements. part of a series ongenetics key components chromosome dna rna genome heredity mutation nucleotide variation outline index history and topics introduction history evolution (molecular) population genetics mendelian inheritance quantitative genetics molecular genetics research geneticist dna sequencing genetic engineering genomics ( template) medical genetics branches of genetics personalized medicine personalized medicine category a red tulip exhibiting a partially yellow petal due to a mutation in its genes mutation with double bloom in the langheck nature reserve near nittel, germany mutations may or may not produce detectable changes in the observable characteristics (phenotype) of an organism. mutations play a part in both normal and abnormal biological processes including: evolution, cancer, and the development of the immune system, including junctional diversity. mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, providing the raw material on which evolutionary forces such as natural selection can act. mutation can result in many different types of change in sequences. mutations in genes can have no effect, alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning properly or completely. mutations can also occur in non-genic regions. a 2007 study on genetic variations between different species of drosophila suggested that, if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, the result is likely to be harmful, with an estimated 70% of amino acid polymorphisms that have damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or marginally beneficial. due to the damaging effects that mutations can have on genes, organisms have mechanisms such as dna repair to prevent or correct mutations by reverting the mutated sequence back to its original state. overview mutations can involve the duplication of large sections of dna, usually through genetic recombination. these duplications are a major source of raw material for evolving new genes, with tens to hundreds of genes duplicated in animal genomes every million years. most genes belong to larger gene families of shared ancestry, detectable by their sequence homology. novel genes are produced by several methods, commonly through the duplication and mutation of an ancestral gene, or by recombining parts of different genes to form new combinations with new functions. here, protein domains act as modules, each with a particular and independent function, that can be mixed together to produce genes encoding new proteins with novel properties. for example, the human eye uses four genes to make structures that sense light: three for cone cell or color vision and one for rod cell or night vision; all four arose from a single ancestral gene. another advantage of duplicating a gene (or even an entire genome) is that this increases engineering redundancy; this allows one gene in the pair to acquire a new function while the other copy performs the original function. other types of mutation occasionally create new genes from previously noncoding dna. changes in chromosome number may involve even larger mutations, where segments of the dna within chromosomes break and then rearrange. for example, in the homininae, two chromosomes fused to produce human chromosome 2; this fusion did not occur in the lineage of the other apes, and they retain these separate chromosomes. in evolution, the most important role of such chromosomal rearrangements may be to accelerate the divergence of a population into new species by making populations less likely to interbreed, thereby preserving genetic differences between these populations. sequences of dna that can move about the genome, such as transposons, make up a major fraction of the genetic material of plants and animals, and may have been important in the evolution of genomes. for example, more than a million copies of the alu sequence are present in the human genome, and these sequences have now been recruited to perform functions such as regulating gene expression. another effect of these mobile dna sequences is that when they move within a genome, they can mutate or delete existing genes and thereby produce genetic diversity. nonlethal mutations accumulate within the gene pool and increase the amount of genetic variation. the abundance of some genetic changes within the gene pool can be reduced by natural selection, while other "more favorable" mutations may accumulate and result in adaptive changes. prodryas persephone, a late eocene butterfly for example, a butterfly may produce offspring with new mutations. the majority of these mutations will have no effect; but one might change the color of one of the butterfly's offspring, making it harder (or easier) for predators to see. if this color change is advantageous, the chances of this butterfly's surviving and producing its own offspring are a little better, and over time the number of butterflies with this mutation may form a larger percentage of the population. neutral mutations are defined as mutations whose effects do not influence the fitness of an individual. these can increase in frequency over time due to genetic drift. it is believed that the overwhelming majority of mutations have no significant effect on an organism's fitness. also, dna repair mechanisms are able to mend most changes before they become permanent mutations, and many organisms have mechanisms for eliminating otherwise-permanently mutated somatic cells. beneficial mutations can improve reproductive success. causes four classes of mutations are (1) spontaneous mutations (molecular decay), (2) mutations due to error-prone replication bypass of naturally occurring dna damage (also called error-prone translesion synthesis), (3) errors introduced during dna repair, and (4) induced mutations caused by mutagens. scientists may also deliberately introduce mutant sequences through dna manipulation for the sake of scientific experimentation. one 2017 study claimed that 66% of cancer-causing mutations are random, 29% are due to the environment (the studied population spanned 69 countries), and 5% are inherited. humans on average pass 60 new mutations to their children but fathers pass more mutations depending on their age with every year adding two new mutations to a child. spontaneous mutation spontaneous mutations occur with non-zero probability even given a healthy, uncontaminated cell. naturally occurring oxidative dna damage is estimated to occur 10,000 times per cell per day in humans and 100,000 times per cell per day in rats. spontaneous mutations can be characterized by the specific change: tautomerism – a base is changed by the repositioning of a hydrogen atom, altering the hydrogen bonding pattern of that base, resulting in incorrect base pairing during replication. theoretical results suggest that proton tunneling is an important factor in the spontaneous creation of gc tautomers. depurination – loss of a purine base (a or g) to form an apurinic site (ap site). deamination – hydrolysis changes a normal base to an atypical base containing a keto group in place of the original amine group. examples include c → u and a → hx (hypoxanthine), which can be corrected by dna repair mechanisms; and 5mec (5-methylcytosine) → t, which is less likely to be detected as a mutation because thymine is a normal dna base. slipped strand mispairing – denaturation of the new strand from the template during replication, followed by renaturation in a different spot ("slipping"). this can lead to insertions or deletions. error-prone replication bypass there is increasing evidence that the majority of spontaneously arising mutations are due to error-prone replication (translesion synthesis) past dna damage in the template strand. in mice, the majority of mutations are caused by translesion synthesis. likewise, in yeast, kunz et al. found that more than 60% of the spontaneous single base pair substitutions and deletions were caused by translesion synthesis. errors introduced during dna repair although naturally occurring double-strand breaks occur at a relatively low frequency in dna, their repair often causes mutation. non-homologous end joining (nhej) is a major pathway for repairing double-strand breaks. nhej involves removal of a few nucleotides to allow somewhat inaccurate alignment of the two ends for rejoining followed by addition of nucleotides to fill in gaps. as a consequence, nhej often introduces mutations. a covalent adduct between the metabolite of benzopyrene, the major mutagen in tobacco smoke, and dna induced mutation induced mutations are alterations in the gene after it has come in contact with mutagens and environmental causes. induced mutations on the molecular level can be caused by: chemicals hydroxylamine base analogs (e.g., bromodeoxyuridine (brdu)) alkylating agents (e.g., n-ethyl-n-nitrosourea (enu). these agents can mutate both replicating and non-replicating dna. in contrast, a base analog can mutate the dna only when the analog is incorporated in replicating the dna. each of these classes of chemical mutagens has certain effects that then lead to transitions, transversions, or deletions. agents that form dna adducts (e.g., ochratoxin a) dna intercalating agents (e.g., ethidium bromide) dna crosslinkers oxidative damage nitrous acid converts amine groups on a and c to diazo groups, altering their hydrogen bonding patterns, which leads to incorrect base pairing during replication. radiation ultraviolet light (uv) (including non-ionizing radiation). two nucleotide bases in dna—cytosine and thymine—are most vulnerable to radiation that can change their properties. uv light can induce adjacent pyrimidine bases in a dna strand to become covalently joined as a pyrimidine dimer. uv radiation, in particular longer-wave uva, can also cause oxidative damage to dna. ionizing radiation. exposure to ionizing radiation, such as gamma radiation, can result in mutation, possibly resulting in cancer or death. whereas in former times mutations were assumed to occur by chance, or induced by mutagens, molecular mechanisms of mutation have been discovered in bacteria and across the tree of life. as s. rosenberg states, "these mechanisms reveal a picture of highly regulated mutagenesis, up-regulated temporally by stress responses and activated when cells/organisms are maladapted to their environments—when stressed—potentially accelerating adaptation." since they are self-induced mutagenic mechanisms that increase the adaptation rate of organisms, they have some times been named as adaptive mutagenesis mechanisms, and include the sos response in bacteria, ectopic intrachromosomal recombination and other chromosomal events such as duplications. classification of types by effect on structure five types of chromosomal mutations types of small-scale mutations the sequence of a gene can be altered in a number of ways. gene mutations have varying effects on health depending on where they occur and whether they alter the function of essential proteins. mutations in the structure of genes can be classified into several types. large-scale mutations