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Dna Mutation Essay

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How do different types of mutations in genes affect the function of an organism? The answer is a very lengthy one, however small mutations such as adding or deleting a letter in a DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, sequence may dramatically change the health of an organism. Mutations are changes of the DNA in an organism's DNA sequence. There are three main kinds of mutations, substitution, deletion, and insertion. Substitution many times is the least fatal because only a specific letter changes so only the amino acid of the letter is affected. Deletion is when a letter is removed from a DNA sequence, this change usually affects all amino acids after. Insertion is when a letter is inserted into the DNA sequence, this change also usually affect most amino acids after the change. A codon is a sequence of three nucleotides that together form a unit of genetic code in a DNA/RNA molecule. Huntington's …show more content…

The chance of that happening is very low, it can only happen if the new codons code for the same amino acids as the old ones. Examples of different codons with the same amino acid are CAU, CAC. Most of the times the new amino acids after the mutation are different as the above data tables illustrate.

If insertion occurs then most of the amino acids after the mutation will be different. Insertion cause many different diseases such as Huntington disease, and Kennedy disease. Insertion mutation is one of the major three mutations. Insertion is also the most harmful along with deletion. Insertion mutations happen in all animals and plants. Some insertion mutations have been used to make crops bigger and all kinds of diffrent things. Once square shaped tomatoes were made to make them easier to ship and ship more of them, however people protested them and they were taken off the

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