Introduction Germinal and Somatic Mutations Spontaneous and Induced Mutations Types of Mutations Complementation Testing Genetic Topics

Introduction A mutation is any change in the sequence of the DNA encoding a gene. Most of these mutations are recognized because the phenotype of the organism has changed. Our studies of mutations has lead to a better understanding about the nature of genes. Origin ally genes were thought to be beads-on-string, where each bead was a single entity responsible for a phenotype. This theory lead to the concept that only single mutation was possible for a specific gene. Detailed genetic experiments proved that the gene actually consists of many individual units, and specific changes in these units can lead to several mutant phenotypes.. We now know those units are nucleotides. Therefore understanding the nature of mutations is important to our understanding of a gene . Copyright © 1999. Phillip McClean