Plymouth Elementary School first grade students celebrate the groundbreaking of the new Legoland Discovery Center at Plymouth Meeting Mall by playing in a pile of more than 50,000 Lego bricks spilled by a dump truck at the Oct. 25 ceremony. | Photo courtesy Legoland Discovery Center.
If this DNA has a mutation, the child that grows from the fertilized egg will have the mutation in each of his or her cells. Acquired (or somatic) mutations occur at some time during a personâs life and are present only in certain cells, not in every cell in the body.
1 Mutations that occur in the somatic cells may disrupt the function of that particular cell, causing it to die, or causing it to become cancerous (highly proliferative and nasty!). 2  The cell has biological repair mechanisms which can restore the original configuration of DNA after mutation. Mutations affecting the germ (spermatogonial or oogonial) cells are the only mutations with evolutionary consequences. 2  Mutations that occur in the somatic cells may disrupt the function of that particular cell, causing it to die, or causing it to become cancerous (highly proliferative and nasty!).